Alibaba Group Holding Ltd dismissed 10 employees for publicizing a female colleague’s account of sexual assault allegations against a former manager, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company fired the 10 employees for sharing screenshots of the woman’s post in the public domain after removing watermarks that bore their IDs, the Bloomberg report said, citing an internal announcement from last week.
The employees were fired for violating policies against exposing content on employee forums, Bloomberg reported, citing the people familiar.
Three other employees have also been reprimanded for making inappropriate comments in public forum, according to the report.
Alibaba declined to comment on the report.
A female employee had posted an 11-page account on Alibaba’s intranet in early August saying her manager and a client had sexually assaulted her, and that superiors and human resources had not taken the matter seriously in the five days since she reported it.
Alibaba fired the manager accused of sexual assault, but was blasted by state media for not acting until the accuser went public.
The e-commerce company made its decision to fire the 10 workers after wrapping up an internal investigation and has not announced the final results of that probe to the public, Bloomberg reported.
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