Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, July 27 2022 @ 11:09 am
Last modified on Wednesday, July 27 2022 @ 11:33 am
Executives at Baihe Jiayuan Network Group, an online dating subsidiary of conglomerate Fosun International, a pharmaceutical giant in China, were arrested on charges of embezzlement.
According to the South China Morning Post, the executives were found missing which led to reports of their “disappearance,” sparking rumors across social media platforms. Fosun’s anti-graft department had discovered evidence during routine online checks of the company that the executives had abused their positions to commit the crime. The department alerted Fosun which reported the executives to Chinese authorities.
The report of the missing executives initially surfaced on Weibo, with a post sharing that the company’s top executives, including its CEO, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer, along with a number of vice presidents, had disappeared according to South China Morning Post[*1] . Local news picked up the story, so Baihe Jiayuan released a statement saying the executives were in custody and cooperating with authorities.
"Certain executives at Baihe Jiayuan have been arrested by the police," the company said in a post on WeChat. They added that business was resuming as usual to calm app users and investors of Fosun. South China Morning Post reported that the board authorized a new management team to step in and take over duties soon, per the company’s statement.
In April of this year, Baihe Jiayuan’s offshore company Lovelink Group had proposed to grant a stock option plan as an incentive for the company’s management team in order to increase profits and eventually, have Lovelink go public, which might have played into the scheme.
Baihe Jiayuan runs China’s biggest wedding and matchmaking platforms, Baihe.com and Jiayuan.com respectively, which merged in 2016. Combined, they have more than 310 million registered users, according to Fosun International’s website. Fosun bought 70 percent of the merged platforms in 2018 for about $4 billion yuan, or $593 million US, according to the South China Morning Post.
Jiayuan.com was founded in 2003 by Haiyan Gong, who was attending university at the time and recognized a need for an online dating service for “busy students and young professionals in a rapidly urbanizing China,” according to reports at the time.
Baihe, founded in 2005 by Mu Yan, was a fast-growing app with users in 80 different cities across China at the time of acqusition.
Baihe Jiayuan says that operations are going forward per usual with no interruptions to its services. Fosun did not comment on the arrests.