Alibaba group vice president Liu Chunning was taken into custody by Chinese police for corruption and bribery, according to local reports.
Liu was previously a Tencent executive and his arrest was due to report by Tencent, which competes directly in online video area with Alibaba’s film and video business.
Liu worked in senior positions in Tencent for ten years, and assisted top management including Pony Ma with company strategy. He left Tencent in July 2013 to join Alibaba, where he served as its group vice president in charge of its digital entertainment business and a director of Alibaba Pictures, a Hong Kong listed affiliate of Alibaba.
According to an announcement by Tencent on July 9, the company found corruption issues in online video content procurement during a routine internal audit.
Several former employees conspired with the providers of online video content to take kickbacks, the announcement said.
Tencent said it has strict rules against accepting bribes or kickbacks and “improper commercial competition with the company.”
In the same industry, Baidu and Qihoo 360 Technology have also self-reported employee corruption and handed over implicated employee to judicial prosecutions.
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Jianwei (Jerry) Fang is a partner with the China-based Global Law Office in the firm’s Shanghai office. He was a judge in China and studied law at Columbia. He can be reached here.
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