Photo: IC

Zhu Zhanbei, vice president of one of China's leading commercial property investors and operators Dalian Wanda Commercial Management Group (DWCMG), has been taken away by Shanghai police following an investigation on suspicion of corruption, reports said.

Details of the case are yet to be officially released.

According to reports, Zhu had been involved in the bidding of the company's IT equipment procurement, trying to obtain illegitimate benefits.

Wanda Group, the Chinese commercial property giant and parent company of DWCMG, has reportedly removed Zhu's name from their internal system. Zhu was also the president of Beyond Science, a network technology company jointly established by Wanda, Tencent and Golden Technology. The position has now been made vacant.

Zhu joined Wanda 10 years ago as the general manager of Wanda's information engineering department. He is an expert on informatization and holds a doctorate in management from Peking University. 

Wanda Group's executives reported the case internally last week, stressing the group's zero-tolerance stance for corruption, Jiemian.com reported.

Wanda group established its audit team in 2001, which is directly led by Wang Jianlin, the outspoken chairman of Wanda Group, according to the Group's official WeChat account. Wang was previously ranked by Forbes in 2016 as the richest person in Asia with $28.7 billion. In 2020, he was ranked outside the top 10 in Forbes' list of Richest Chinese Billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $14 billion.

The audit team members are composed of professionals in multiple fields including finance, engineering, budgeting, land, water and electricity.

The group audits one to two hundred times a year, involving over one thousand companies and covering all business areas, an article released by the group in 2017 said. Each of the audit instructions each year is signed by Wang.