It is suspected that Ali employees have accepted bribes of nearly 100 million yuan, and they have deeply investigated the gray industry chain of "flagship stores".

Phoenix.com Finance

2024-05-16 10:00Published on the official account of Beijing Phoenix Finance

Produced by Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm".

Author丨Lv Yinling, Li Qiuhan, Editor丨Wen Hua

Breaking news complaint email: [email protected]

Core Tips:

1 During the boom of e-commerce, Alibaba seized the dividends of the times, and CEO Daniel Zhang founded Tmall, allowing many brands to go online. At the same time, the scarce resources settled in the flagship store, as well as strict layers of approval, have also speculated the store to a high price of one million yuan, and given some "Taobao Xiaoer" room to make profits.

2 Based on the three-level review mechanism of Taobao's flagship store, industry insiders infer that it is difficult for a single employee to complete the approval of violations, and the bribed employee is not necessarily a grassroots employee, and he may have a higher level of control from the junior second.

3 As long as there is a shell company and a trademark or license is bought, it can enter the flagship store through illegal approval, which makes the Taobao flagship store uneven.

4 Alibaba's internal anti-corruption mechanism is strict and complex, and many executives have been investigated by internal anti-corruption investigations. However, in the face of layers of decentralized power, there is still a long way to go in how to restrain and confront human greed.

-----------------------------------------------

Accepting bribes of nearly 100 million yuan in a year, the protagonist with such a skill turned out to be just an ordinary grassroots employee of the e-commerce platform, and the power he holds is only the first link in the approval of the store. When CCTV's "Rule of Law Online" program exposed this case on May 14, the group of "e-commerce juniors" entered the public eye, and its energy couldn't help but be jaw-dropping.

According to the report, Wang is a grassroots employee of an e-commerce platform in Hangzhou, responsible for the approval of the official flagship store of the furniture category of the e-commerce platform, and accepted bribes of more than 92 million yuan in one year.

Although the show did not clearly indicate which e-commerce platform the employee came from, netizens have already made guesses based on the keywords: this company is most likely the head e-commerce platform Alibaba in Hangzhou, and this employee is the legendary "Taobao Xiaoer" in Yuhang.

Regarding whether the outside speculation is true, Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" contacted Alibaba's public relations staff for verification, but has not received a reply as of press time. After that, Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" called the Yuhang District Branch of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau, and the police station said that it would have a special person to reply, but as of press time, no reply has been received.

In Hangzhou, Taobao Xiaoer wanders among shop owners, left and right, and almost everyone is envious. This is all due to the platform erected by Alibaba in the heyday of e-commerce. Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" learned from a number of industry insiders that it is the scarce resources of flagship stores that have brought hundreds of millions of business to ordinary employees with approval authority.

01 Some people say that "the entry of merchants requires three layers of review and strict control, not the power of one person"

What is the most important part of opening a flagship store on Taobao? As soon as the bribery case of the e-commerce Xiaoer was exposed, people talked about it, and it turned out that in addition to the complete documents and qualification certificates, to open a store, sometimes it is necessary to have a good approver in order to successfully clear the customs.

In the case exposed by CCTV, Wang's job responsibilities are mainly to screen out good enterprises and partners according to some conditions of the company and settle in the platform. Wang also recruited some relatives and friends to recruit middlemen or merchants to form 8 downlines, so that they could find merchants who had the need to settle in stores, and then clearly marked the price, for example, a store charged 150,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan.

It is suspected that Ali employees have accepted bribes of nearly 100 million yuan, and they have deeply investigated the gray industry chain of "flagship stores".

Collecting money for approval, does Taobao Xiaoer really have so much energy? How did an ordinary employee who is only responsible for approval support such a huge market?

Yao Jiang once opened a Tmall store transfer intermediary company next to Alibaba's park in Hangzhou, mainly to eat the dividends of Alibaba's early e-commerce business. He remembered that Ali Xiaoer had a very high status in Hangzhou, "At that time, the situation was very terrifying, the KTV box near Hangzhou Ali, Ali Xiaoer often chartered the venue, the price was very expensive, and it was tens of thousands of dollars to eat and sing a song." ”

And such a scene is due to the dominance of Taobao before 2020. In 2015, Daniel Zhang took over as the CEO of Alibaba Group, and then founded Tmall, since then, he has followed the strategy of consumption upgrading megatrend, allowing Taobao to tilt a large amount of traffic to Tmall to support the rise of brand merchants. In June 2023, Daniel Zhang officially stepped down as CEO of the Group.

Yao Jiang told Phoenix Network "Eye of the Storm" that at that time, Daniel Zhang's branding strategy led all traffic to Tmall, and a large number of merchants applied for Tmall flagship stores, and the scarcity of the market made it difficult for stores to apply.

He introduced that the store entry audit at that time was very strict, and it was necessary to pass three checkpoints: brand qualification review, preliminary review and review. But many powerful companies can't get approval, so they will choose to buy a flagship store. This gave rise to the Taobao store transfer industry he was engaged in.

Yao Jiang remembers that the price of the Tmall store was once very high, and it took 1 million to buy a cosmetics store, and the peak was 1.4 million in 2017-2018. In addition, the furniture category was speculated to 1.5 million to 1.7 million yuan at its peak.

In addition to intermediaries, a special "next store" has also been derived to provide "on-demand" services for the store. These people are similar to the downline of Xiaoer Development in this case, and they are responsible for collecting customer information with settlement needs.

And some bosses directly find Taobao Xiaoer, according to the market price of the store to be applied for, according to the ratio of 1/4 of the Xiaoer. For example, a cosmetics flagship store that can be bought for 1 million yuan gives Xiao Er 250,000 yuan, and Xiao Er moves the mouse in the background to confirm, and the store comes down. There are also some people who have made this business into an investment, registered some trademarks and companies, and given Xiao Er to spend 250,000 yuan to take down the store, and then sell it on the market, which can be sold for 1 million.

Yao Jiang told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that the three-level audit of the flagship store is the responsibility of different employees in different departments, and it is randomly pushed to different juniors. He reasoned, "The person who accepted the bribes this time is not necessarily a grassroots employee, or he has a higher level of junior control above him, because the grassroots employee alone cannot control the three-level audit." ”

Jia Zhen, an e-commerce veteran seller who has been in deep contact with Alibaba since 2007, has a different view. He who has dealt with Taobao Xiaoer and Ali executives a lot, told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that Ali restricted merchants from entering the market in the early days because most merchants would not be able to make money if the platform traffic did not increase and merchants increased. However, some more profitable industries may be invited to settle in. "The right of targeted invitation is on Xiao Er's side, and there may be an industry that makes money by helping merchants apply for flagship stores. Xiao Er may cooperate with some intermediary companies, even if it is not compliant, it can also approve the store. ”

But he believes that it is mainly grass-roots employees who do this, because the high-level junior not only gets a salary, but also holds Ali's equity, some of which are worth more than 10 million, and it is worth more than 200,000 yuan to accept bribes.

The outside world cannot judge whether the above incident is an isolated case in the Alibaba system, but no matter what level of employee has a problem, this kind of loophole in approval may bring about mixed results in Taobao's flagship store.

Yao Jiang told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that there are some hard requirements for the flagship store to settle in, such as the company may be required to be registered for one year, and some small two or investors will go to the market to collect the license of the agency bookkeeping company. This is a shell company. However, some really powerful offline companies may not be able to apply.

02 Why is Alibaba's regulatory system invalid?

As for anti-corruption, Ali's actions have not been small. According to public information, the "Integrity and Compliance Department" was established in 2012 to focus on corruption investigation, prevention and compliance management, and only report to the Group's CPO (Chief Human Resources Officer), and the authority for integrity investigation is "unlimited". In recent years, Ali has made anti-corruption achievements, such as the former vice president of Alibaba Pictures and the general manager of Taopiaopiao, the former general manager of Juhuasuan, the former vice president of the human resources department of Alibaba Group, and the former president of Youku Business Group, all of whom were investigated for accepting bribes.

"As a businessman, I have a lot of contact with Ali, and I feel that Ali has done a particularly good job in anti-corruption." Jia Zhen told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that when Ali Xiaoer was in contact with the store, he was not even allowed to pick up and drop, and he had to AA to eat. Taobao Xiaoer often told him that he felt that he was being monitored anytime and anywhere.

However, it is still difficult to eradicate corruption, and corruption cases have been staged again and again.

Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" spoke to a number of industry insiders, former and current employees of Alibaba, and they all mentioned the opportunity of empowerment. The traffic of the platform is too large, for merchants, traffic is money, and whether they can enter the platform and whether they can get support determines the income of merchants.

In a 2016 incident, Jiang Fang, chief human resources officer of Alibaba Group, mentioned that "Alibaba is a company that really delegates power to every ordinary small second-hand company". The reason for decentralization is that "only empowerment can serve customers well and make quick and effective decisions based on customer needs faster." ”

Jia Zhen told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that Ali Xiaoer was very powerful in the early days, and he could decide whether to give traffic to business A or business B. As a result at that time, Alifang called the police and the relevant personnel were taken away. According to his observations, in order to fight corruption, there are business units that are already recycling rights.

But even so, the power of the people who do business on the front line is still concentrated, and the employees exposed this time are involved in the approval of the home furnishing industry category. A former middle-level employee of Ali introduced that internally, the actual power of the second child in the industry line is greater. He explained, for example, such as live broadcast, Juhuasuan, tens of billions of subsidies, etc., these are specific product groups, and they are like organs in the platform; The industry line composed of stores of the same kind is like a blood vessel in the platform, and the influence flows around like blood.

For example, the industry junior two said that they wanted to create a festival and push local emerging brands, and they gave a list of brands and asked each product group to give resources to traffic, and the product group would not ask rhetorically: Why do you want to push this store, and what is your standard for pushing this brand? Generally direct fits.

Secondly, the interviewees also mentioned that in the concentration of power, in the face of temptation, it is difficult for human nature to restrain it.

An Alibaba employee who has frequent contact with merchants told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that employees who have a lot of contact with merchants, such as brand managers and store juniors, have faced this kind of temptation. For example, when doing activities, there will be tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of traffic subsidies for merchants, and when contacting merchants, there will be merchants who hope to tilt towards him and will want to give money secretly. Some business content will be aligned with the brand side on how to market next month, and the person in charge of some stores will also want to steal money from the local regional manager, hoping to be taken care of.

When encountering this kind of situation, he will refuse, because the company's management is strict, and his salary is not low, so he doesn't want to lose his job, but he admits that it is not easy to detect whether he accepts it, "unless the merchant and Xiao Er are unpleasantly reported, or too publicized to be discovered."

An employee who had previously done channel investment promotion in Ali also mentioned that when recruiting city agents before, there would also be a phenomenon that agents wanted to obtain agency rights through gifts.

However, in the view of the above-mentioned former Ali middle-level, this time the grassroots employees were able to accept bribes of 92 million, involving 400 businesses, and the occurrence of the incident may be related to internal management loopholes. When the policy of merchant entry is very strict, the power of grassroots employees as approvers will be continuously amplified. "Such a grassroots employee has so much power, and it lasts for such a long time, the background operations of these more than 400 businesses are recorded, so obvious, why don't the leaders above? Is there something wrong with the policy? Or is there no one to supervise the execution? ”

Alibaba's anti-corruption system seems to have created an impregnable wall, but in such a huge organization, it may be a long and endless road to try to complete the restraint and confrontation of human nature in a place where power is concentrated.

(Yao Jiang is a pseudonym in the article.) ）

View original image 309K