Alibaba fires 10 people as sexual assault allegations leak

(Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has fired 10 employees for publishing a colleague’s account of allegations of sexual assault against a former manager, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company fired the 10 employees for making screenshots of the woman’s post publicly available after removing watermarks with their IDs, the Bloomberg report https://bloom.bg/3kz5Mbk said, citing an internal announcement from last week.

The employees were fired for violating guidelines on disclosing content in employee forums, Bloomberg reported, citing people known to them.

According to the report, three other employees were also reprimanded for making inappropriate comments in public forums.

Alibaba declined to comment on the report.

An employee posted an 11-page report on Alibaba’s intranet in early August that said her supervisor and a customer had sexually abused her and that supervisors and human resources had not taken the matter seriously in the five days since she reported it.

Alibaba fired the executive accused of sexual assault, but was criticized by state media for failing to act until the accuser went public.

The e-commerce company made its decision to lay off the 10 employees after completing an internal investigation and did not disclose the final results of that investigation to the public, Bloomberg reported.

(Reporting by Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)