Asian Tech Press -- Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA: NYSE) announced on Monday that it fired the manager who had been accused of raping a female subordinate.
An Alibaba female employee took to social media on Aug. 7 to reveal that she had been molested by a client when entertaining him and raped by her boss after being intoxicated.The news sparked an uproar in China.
Subsequently, pictures about Alibaba's ”ice-breaking culture“ were spread online. From the netizen's revelations, in Alibaba's icebreaker activities, the new employees were asked not only to answer some very private and offensive questions, but also to make some vulgar physical contact.
In this regard, Alibaba said that what the the pictures show is a rumor from 2018, when Alibaba has debunked it. And the company said the people involved in the pictures are not Alibaba employees, and not Alibaba internal training.
After the incident of sexual assault was exposed, the police have launched an investigation.
In the early hours of Monday, Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang announced the results of a staged internal investigation and the decision to deal with the incident in an internal memo.
The internal email showed that the male employee who allegedly assaulted the female colleague admitted to having an ”excessively intimate behavior“ with her in a drunken state., which is a serious violation of the company's rules. And the manager involved was dismissed and never hired.
The announcement also said that whether the man had committed rape or molestation, depending on the results of the police investigation.
In addition, Li Yonghe and Xu Kun, president and human resources generalist of Alibaba's Neighbourhood Retail Business group, has resigned for mishandling the incident.
After Alibaba announced the relevant decision, news online said that Wang, the male leader who allegedly assaulted the female employee, had recently gone to ByteDance for an interview, which once again triggered a hot debate.
The media learned from ByteDance that after verification, the man surnamed Wang was indeed in the recruitment process for a position at ByteDance and had passed the first round of initial screening. The candidate's interview time was just before the incident was exposed, and the interviewer and HR were not aware of the situation.
ByteDance told the media: "After verification, the company has made a note of the case in the talent pool at the first time, and indefinitely terminated the recruitment process for the man. If there is a clear conclusion of his violation of law and ethics, the candidate will be added to the ByteDance blacklist and will never be hired."
