A senior executive at Alibaba Pictures has been detained by Chinese police under alleged corruption charges. According to local Chinese media reports, Kong Qi, a VP of Alibaba Pictures and general manager of Tao Piaopiao, the company’s online ticketing service, was detained by police in July under the suspicion of taking bribes of $1.45M (RMB 10M).
Alibaba Pictures told Deadline that the alleged offences occurred prior to Kong joining the company.
“Alibaba Pictures would like to clarify that, the incidents being mentioned by the media did not take place during Kong Qi’s tenure at Alibaba Pictures and are not in any way related to Alibaba Pictures’ current business,” said a spokesperson for the company.
This marks the second APG exec to have been arrested in the last year and a half. In July 2015, Patrick Liu Chunning, another senior exec, was detained on bribery charges for allegedly accepting $308,000 during his time at rival Tencent Video. Days later, a number of other former employees at Tencent were also detained.
Liu was detained by police before he could attend a single APG board meeting but was later removed from its board of directors in January this year for repeatedly failing to attend board meetings.
There’s been a crackdown in recent years across China’s booming media industry. In January, the former president of online giant Youku Tudou, Lu Fanxi, was detained on corruption charges. In December last year, Chinese conglom Fosun founder Guo Guangchang, the 17th richest person in China with an estimated net worth of $5.6 billion, was briefly detained by Chinese authorities. Fosun is an investor in Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8.