Chinese online retail giant Alibaba said it has suspended several employees after a female employee at the company accused her boss and a customer of raping her while under the influence during a business trip.
The woman's description of the incident, which she posted on an 11-page file and was widely circulated on Chinese social networking sites, caused an uproar on the Internet, while the police said they were investigating the incident.
"The group pursues a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct, and ensuring a safe workplace for all of our employees is Alibaba's top priority," Alibaba said in a statement.
"We have suspended relevant parties suspected of violating our policies and values, and have established a special internal task force to investigate the case and support ongoing police investigations," a spokesperson for the group said.
Late, Saturday, a company employee published her account of an accident that she said occurred during a "business trip", and claimed - without revealing her identity - that her boss forced her to go with him on a business trip to meet one of their team's customers in Jinan, 900 km from the headquarters. Alibaba company in Hangzhou.
According to the woman, on the evening of July 27, the client kissed her, and after drinking alcohol, she woke up in a hotel room the next day without her clothes and without remembering what had happened the previous evening.
She said CCTV footage she obtained from the hotel showed her boss entered the room four times during the evening, and she also found a box of "condoms" in the room.
The employee said that she informed the company's human resources department after her return to her city, and requested the dismissal of her boss, but "human resources did not follow up on what happened."
"They said they would not act, out of concern for my reputation," she added, according to the Washington Post.
Alibaba's CEO, Daniel Chang, responded to the uproar the post made late Saturday on the company's internal message board, according to Reuters sources, saying that "it is not only human resources who should apologize, but the relevant business managers as well." They must apologize for their silence and for not responding in a timely manner."
Last month, another sex scandal rocked China when an 18-year-old Chinese student publicly accused Sino-Canadian pop singer Chris Wu of inciting her and other girls, some under 18, to have sex with him.
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