Two held in Alibaba molestation case

Two male suspects accused of molesting a female employee of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have been detained, police said on Saturday.

The police bureau in Jinan, capital of Shandong province, where the assaults allegedly occurred, issued a statement on Saturday saying there was no evidence of rape, as claimed by the woman, and the investigation is ongoing.

The woman recently posted a detailed internal post alleging that her male manager, surnamed Wang, and a client, surnamed Zhang, sexually assaulted her in a hotel room during a business trip to Jinan on July 27. The post said she complained about the incidents to Alibaba's human resources department, but was ignored.

The incidents sparked intense public criticism of Alibaba, which fired Wang on Aug 9. The client, who was a staff member of Jinan Hualian supermarket, was also fired, the supermarket said.

The woman, Wang and two other Alibaba employees had gone to Jinan to negotiate a deal. After a contract was signed on July 27, they dined with four of the supermarket's employees, including Zhang.

The police statement said that after the dinner, Wang allegedly entered the woman's hotel room four times that night and early the next morning while she was drunk and molested her during one of those visits.

Zhang was alleged to have molested the woman twice. The first time was around 9:29 pm on July 27, when he accompanied her on her way back to the banquet after she vomited from excessive drinking, and the second time was around 8 am the next morning in her hotel room after she had given him her room number. The statement didn't give more details.

It said the police received a report from the woman at around noon on July 28. They then checked the hotel's surveillance footage and took her to a hospital to be examined.

The investigation yielded no evidence that the woman was forced to take the business trip or drink alcohol during the banquet as she had claimed, it said.