Liu and other ex- members of Tencent’s video business left the company following a leadership reshuffle around 2013, later joining Alibaba.
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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will provide legal support to Patrick Liu, president of its digital entertainment unit, after he was taken into police custody.
Tencent has not identified the ex- employees, but said that “the police have been notified” and they were awaiting further information.
“We understand that Patrick Liu with our digital entertainment unit has been detained by the authorities. This problem associated with his valuable time at Tencent and also has you nothing to do by having Alibaba”, Alibaba spokesperson Bob Christie said with in electronic mail.
Tencent is behind China’s popular messaging app, WeChat. Last month, Liu announced in Shanghai that Alibaba would launch its own online video streaming service called Tmall Box Office, or TBO.
Alibaba also has a large stake in Weibo, a social media site similar to Twitter as well as Chinese online video providers similar to YouTube.
The news come amid an anti-corruption drive by Beijing, that has resulted in officials at various levels of government, as well as company executives, being taken into custody.
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Among high-profile cases in the private sector, the ex- China head of pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline was charged with bribery in 2014.
