Tencent executive under investigation for ties to China’s disgraced deputy police chief, The Wall Street Journal reports

Zhang Feng has been under investigation by Chinese authorities since early 2020, allegedly for the ‘unauthorised sharing of personal data collected by Tencent’s social-media app WeChat’ with a disgraced police chief, WSJ reported

Pony Ma Huateng, the founder and chief executive officer of Tencent, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, WSJ said

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The headquarters of Tencent in Beijing on August 07, 2020. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:51pm, 11 Feb 2021Updated: 5:03pm, 11 Feb 2021

An executive at Tencent Holdings has been detained by Chinese authorities in relation to the corruption investigation against Sun Lijun, a former vice-minister at the powerful Ministry of Public Security, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Zhang Feng, the Tencent executive, has been under investigation by Chinese authorities since early 2020, allegedly for the “unauthorised sharing of personal data collected by Tencent’s social-media app WeChat” with Sun, according to the report written by unnamed “Wall Street Journal staff” citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Chinese investigators are looking at the type of data that Zhang shared with Sun, and what Sun “might have done with it,” the report said. The former vice-minister, who headed China’s domestic security, as well as the office in charge of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan affairs within the ministry before his promotion in March 2018, was put under disciplinary investigation for suspected serious violations on April 19. He was sacked from his vice-minister’s position in May last year.

Tencent’s shares fell 0.5 per cent to HK$757 in Hong Kong before taking a two-day break for the Lunar New Year public holiday. Trading will resume on February 16. Shares of the Shenzhen-based technology giant have soared 85 per cent in the past 12 months, giving it HK$7.263 trillion (US$936.8 billion) in market capitalisation as the world’s sixth-most valuable company ahead of Facebook.

An undated photo of China’s former public security vice-minister Sun Lijun. Photo: Handout

Sun’s downfall was another major case that shook China’s police and public security system, after the arrest of the former Interpol president Meng Hongwei. Corrupt elements, or “poisonous residue”, still exist in China’s public security ministry, and are traceable to Meng, Sun and the country’s former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s anti-corruption investigation agency, said in a statement this week.

Zhou, who ran China’s public security and court system, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015. Meng, also a former vice-minister, was convicted of bribery and sentenced to 13-and-a-half years in jail by a Chinese court in January 2020.