Tencent Fires 100 Suspicious Employees for Alleged Graft Involvement

Urian B., Tech Times 02 February 2021, 10:02 pm

(Photo : Screenshot From Tim Tao YouTube) Tencent Internally Fires 100 Suspicious Employees for Alleged Graft Involvement After Investigations Over the Past Year

Tencent Holdings Ltd. has just fired over 100 different employees on suspicion of being involved in graft after quite a series of investigations that took place over the past year. This offers a rare glimpse into the anti-corruption campaign within China's supposedly most valuable corporation.

Tencent fires 100 employees

The said social media and gaming giant stated it's investigated allegations of graft in well about 60 different cases ever since the fourth quarter of 2019. The company had also reported over 40 staffers to the police authorities.

According to the story by Bloomberg, the company had also blacklisted and even terminated its relations with about 37 different partner companies over the course of the said probes. This announcement was given by the social media giant on its official corporate WeChat account.

China's crackdown on corruption

The rare revelation by what is known as one of China's most prominent private firms that is underscoring Beijing's increasingly hard stance regarding corruption among the government cadres as well as corporate executives. It was found that over 1.5 million government officials in itself have all been punished within a year-long campaign that was prioritized by Xi JinPing, the current Chinese President. Beijing is also now tightening its scrutiny over what they note as its most powerful tech corporations all seeking to rein in their own growing power in a said plethora of sectors stretching from finance to e-commerce and the whole sharing economy.

The allegations of graft have recently surfaced sporadically among the country's said biggest tech giants over the course of the past year. However, Tencent's disclosures had marked one of the most complete internal reviews that was yet made publicized.

In its own statement, Tencent had even singled out a certain score of employees by their names stretching across a number of divisions which included both gaming and entertainment. It also outlined certain alleged infractions from the influence-peddling and the accepting kickbacks coming from suppliers to bribery.

ByteDance sues Tencent Holdings

In another recent news report by South China Morning Post, the popular TikTok owner ByteDance has just recently sued Tencent Holdings just on Tuesday. The company had alleged that its Shenzhen-based competition was actually violating certain Chinese antitrust laws by actually blocking access to certain content from Douyin, which is the domestic version of the said TikTok.

ByteDance noted that it is now seeking a whopping $14 million or to be exact, 90 million yuan, in compensation for what the company had recently said in Tencent's practice of actually blocking links that lead to Douyin on both the WeChat and the QQ messaging platforms which are really big messaging apps in China. The ByteDance representative noted that they believe that competition is actually better for consumers and that it also promotes innovation. It was noted that they have filed this particular lawsuit in order to protect their rights as well as the rights of certain users.

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Written by Urian Buenconsejo