Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group demoted its e-commerce chief Jiang Fan and removed him from its partners' committee over an alleged extramarital affair with a social media influencer.

Earlier this month, Jiang's wife took to Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like platform, to publicly warn a leading social media influencer to not "seduce" her husband in a post that sparked speculation that the two were having an affair. The post was later removed.

Before the scandal, Jiang was tipped to become the next CEO of Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce group, succeeding Daniel Zhang. Jiang became the president of Taobao in 2017 and took over Tmall in 2019.

Alibaba has decided Jiang will still keep his job as the head of Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall, two of the group's leading e-commerce websites, but will be removed from the company's partnership of 38 people, who have a say in appointing some board members in the company. He was also demoted from senior vice president to vice president and deprived of last year's financial bonus.

The company conducted an internal investigation to probe if the alleged affair influenced the group's business decisions and Alibaba's investment in the social media influencer's company Ruhnn Holdings in 2016.

The investigation results, released on Monday, showed no evidence of business misconduct or profit transferring between the business units Jiang was leading and Ruhnn Holdings. Jiang was not involved in Alibaba's decision to invest in Ruhnn Holdings.

However, the company believes that as a senior executive, Jiang's failure in properly handling his family affairs has caused a public opinion crisis and damaged the company's reputation. As an online shopping site, the alleged affair is a severe offense to its female users.

(Cover: VCG)