Chinese TV: Ant Group (Alibaba) linked to Chinese government corruption cases
The situation of the Ant group, of which Alibaba is a part, is increasingly tense in its relations with the Chinese government. The latest nudge came directly from Chinese state TV CCTV, which released a report involving Ant Group, the Alibaba group headed by Jack Ma, in a wide-ranging corruption scandal. In China with these accusations you can have the death sentence …
The documentary did not call Ant directly, but alluded to the company founded in Hangzhou. It referred to the relative of a senior official arrested for corruption in August and now accused of giving Ant Group "discounts" on plots of building land and other support for "government policies".
Here is what the Financial Times , which released its own report on the CCTV documentary, says:
A documentary on state-run China Central Television alleged that private companies made "unreasonably high payments" to the brother of the former Chinese Communist Party leader in Hangzhou, an eastern city that houses the Ant Group headquarters, in exchange government political incentives and support for real estate purchases.
According to public documents and two sources close to the deals, a unit of Ant Group bought two plots of land at a discount in Hangzhou in 2019 after taking stakes in two mobile payment businesses owned by the party secretary's younger brother which are been named in the documentary.
Although the documentary did not name Jack Ma's company, the Ant unit was the only external corporate investor in one of these businesses, according to public records, and was among three corporate investors in the second.
"The nature of such a transfer of interests is an exchange of power and capital," says the documentary, produced by the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection of the Communist Party. The material broadcast by the Chinese state broadcaster represents the official party line.
The news comes a week after a state-owned asset manager withdrew a deal to invest in Ant. In hindsight, such a rejection by a state-controlled entity was likely a harbinger of bad news to come.
The name of the now incarcerated CCP officer is Zhou Jiangyong, a former party secretary from Hangzhou. Many of the allegations concern his brother, who helped secure lucrative contracts with local government entities.
Young Zhou, a former business school professor, launched Youcheng United (Ningbo) Information Technology Development Co in 2016, winning contracts to build subway mobile payment systems in coastal hubs of Ningbo and Wenzhou, according to the documentary. At that time, his brother was the party secretary of these cities. "He won the deal because I was a government official," Zhou, the former party secretary, said of his brother in the documentary.
Ant has entered into a number of deals with young Zhou. Public records show that Shanghai Yunxin Venture Capital Management Co, a subsidiary of Ant, paid Rmb 1.7 million ($ 268,000) for a 14.3% stake and a seat on the board of Youcheng United (Ningbo) in March. 2019. Thus corruption would take a refined form, such as buying the shares in the company of the party official's brother. A source close to Ant Group said that now the time may have come when the company will pay for corruption in the CCP.
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The Chinese TV article: Ant Group (Alibaba) linked to Chinese government corruption cases comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/tv-cinese-ant-group-alibaba-legata-a-casi-di-corruzione-del-governo-cinese/ on Sat, 22 Jan 2022 07:00:27 +0000.