Former Didi Executives Convicted for Accepting Bribes

Didi’s former senior technical director in the basic platform department, an individual surnamed Yu, was convicted on Wednesday for accepting bribes. In June last year, the Chinese ride-sharing giant released an internal announcement that Yu was subject to criminal coercive measures for taking huge bribes.

The criminal judgment of the Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing suggests Yu was convicted of accepting bribes as a non-state functionary, sentenced to five years in prison and fined 500,000 yuan ($78,444). The court recovered Yu’s illegal income totaling 1,457,400 yuan and confiscated it.

After graduation, Yu first worked as a project manager (PM) at Sina, and later worked on operations. He was once PM at Sina, senior PM at Baidu‘s Operation and Maintenance Department and later in the Systems Department, director at Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s Operation and Maintenance Department Director, director in AutoNavi’s Operation and Maintenance Department, and head of AutoNavi’s PE under Alibaba Group.

Yu was the senior technical director of Didi Chuxing since August 2015. During the bidding period of a server procurement project, he took advantage of his position to illegally accept cash totaling 772,600 yuan from employees of Beiming Software and a Mercedes-Benz car worth 684,800 yuan.

Digital records, such as a procurement operation guide, procurement bid-winning notice email and score change records, as listed in the judgment, Beiming Software was not a qualified bidder of Didi, but Yu changed its technical score and instructed Beiming Software to adjust the quotation. Yu’s operations made Beiming Software win the bid. According to the testimony of Yu’s subordinates, besides Beiming Software, Yu also transferred technical points for Lenovo and Inspur.

SEE ALSO: Didi Reveals $4.8 Billion Loss, Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong Resigns From Board

In addition, Yu’s colleague testified that Yu had privately admitted to him that he had received 772,600 yuan from Beiming Software and 7.2 million yuan from Inspur, totaling 7,972,600 yuan. However, it is strange that there is no relevant judgment on Yu’s acceptance of 7.2 million yuan benefit fee from Inspur. According to industry insiders, there is no evidence in court, so there is no relevant judgment.