Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com published an anti-graft announcement on Friday and revealed 16 cases of corruption. Four people were detained by the police, suspected of criminal offenses, and 16 were laid off. JD also published full names of all its former employees and some of the photos when the police came to detain them.
Most of the cases were associated with the bribery by or of a JD staff member and an external company or misappropriation of corporate assets. The involved departments ranged from to different sectors under the retail division to the company’s finance division. For instance, Ren Bing, a manager at JD’s delivery division, had taken money and gifts from carriers. Ren has been detained by the police. Guo Zhiduo, a business development staff at JD’s e-commerce division, borrowed money from several suppliers.
JD said in the announcement that it will not tolerate any type of corruption and the names of all parties that are involved in the corruption will be made known to the public.
The first anti-corruption announcement JD published can be dated back to November 2016 when a deliveryman took possession of RMB 500,000 worth of JD’s goods.
One of the highest-level staff that had been accused of corruption at JD was Wu Sheng, the former vice president of Jingdong Mall. The accusation was that Wu set up companies and used JD’s resources to help his own company to grow. Wu resigned after the accusation.
JD is part of the anti-corruption trend in the internet industry which has been expanding at a rapid pace. In February 2011, AlibabaB2B, the B2B division of the tech giant Alibaba, announced that it has cleaned up more than 1000 suppliers who were suspected of fraud. Wei Zhe, CEO of AlibabaB2B, and Li Xuhui, COO of the company, acknowledged their mistakes and resigned.
In February 2017, Tech giants including Baidu, JD, Meituan-Dianping and Tencent and other large corporates including P&G and Walmart co-founded Trust and Integrity Enterprise Alliance, trying to build up a better anti-corruption system.