The e-commerce giant launched an investigation when an Alibaba employee accused her manager of sexually assaulting her after a night of heavy drinking while on a business trip in July. That inquiry has almost concluded and its results will soon be announced, the company said on its official blog Thursday. Alibaba has meanwhile established a committee to police its workplace environment, comprised of senior female executives including Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu and Chief People Officer Judy Tong, who was publicly censured Monday for the company’s mishandling of the incident.
The employee’s allegations, which went viral on China’s tightly controlled internet, have reverberated across the upper echelons of Alibaba and in C-suites across much of the country. The accused Alibaba manager has been fired, two senior executives at the e-commerce giant have resigned and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang has issued a remarkable mea culpa, calling the company’s handling of the incident a “humiliation.”
