Debt-ridden LeTV Adds Debt Total to App Icon Amid Lunar New Year Red Envelope Fever

Debt-ridden LeTV on Feb. 6 updated its app to Android 9.24 and changed its icon, adding the caption “owing 12.2 billion yuan.”

In the app’s latest version, the projection function of LeTV has been optimized to make its video display smoother. But there is no explanation for the updated logo caption. 

LeTV’s parent company, Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corporation, has been attached to a new execution subjection of 64,300 yuan. Until now, the debt-ridden company has been fined 203 times with an overall forfeit of nearly 150 million yuan.

Founded in 2004 with a disclosed registered capital of about 4 billion yuan, the company’s actual controller is Yueting Jia, whose shareholding ratio is 22.5%. The video site was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010 but was ordered to delist on May 14, 2020 due to company losses. 

The financial fiasco was followed by a punishment from the China Securities Regulatory Commission since it was suspected of fraudulent shares issuance and illegal information disclosure. The company was therefore fined 240 million yuan. 

The amount featured in the logo, which is as much as 12.2 billion yuan, could be hyperbole and the hashtag #LeTV Owes 12.2 Billion Yuan# started trending on popular microblogging platform Weibo overnight.

Many netizens assumed this as a way of LeTV’s self-deprecating gesture towards its history. But even more so, netizens deem this change of logo as clout-chasing. As the lunar Chinese New Year approaches, tech giants, including Alibaba, Pinduoduo, Tencent, Kuaishou, Baidu and JD.com, are giving out billions of yuan in red envelopes to users in order to attract more traffic to their products amid the holiday. 

SEE ALSO: Jia Yueting No Longer Owns Equity in FF, Apologizes For Downfall of Leshi

LeTV has not yet commented on the issue as of press time.