The news came more than two weeks after the announcement of his disappearance. In a press release published this Wednesday on Chinese networks, the police confirmed the arrest of the boss of the online gaming platform DouYu, suspected of having opened a casino.
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From our correspondent in Beijing,
Chen Shaojie is the latest business leader to be taken into custody in China. According to the press release from the Chengdu police in the southwest of the country, a 39-year-old man named Chen – in Asia it is first names that define identity and these are only revealed at the end of the investigation – was arrested on November 16 for allegedly hosting illegal gambling on Chinese territory.
“ Fighting fish »
The official DouYu website claimed on Tuesday, November 21, to have learned of the arrest of its founder, but without having received official notification concerning the motivations for the investigation. As is often the case in this type of case, the revelation of the detention is preceded by a more or less long media disappearance. According to the revelations of media Cover News two weeks ago, Chen Shaojie would have disappeared from the radar since mid-October. Some even say that contact was lost before that. The CEO of DouYu – “ fighting fish » in Mandarin – hasn’t made many public appearances lately, notes again THE Daily Economic News : “ his last appearance in public dates back to August 14, during the second quarter results conference. »
Backed by Tencent, DouYu is the Chinese equivalent of Twitch. It is above all one of the largest Chinese online gaming platforms and its success has long accompanied that of its founder. Born in 1984 in Jinan on the east coast, Chen Shaojie quickly dropped out of school to start his own business. First a fighting game platform that it will resell, before focusing on live multimedia broadcasting with content such as games, sports, and variety shows. A success which brings him into the list of Hurun billionaires in 2019, before a decline in activity. DouYu’s revenues increased from 1.23 billion euros in 2020 to almost 913 million euros in 2022.
Virtual currency lotteries
According to daily life Lianhe Zaobao, rumors within the industry have recently claimed that strange things are happening in one of the platform’s streaming rooms. In this case, the “Changsha Countryside Death Squadron” where players, by purchasing designated accessories, could participate in lotteries in virtual currency.
For the moment, neither DouYu nor the police have confirmed these claims. What is certain, however, is that Chen Shaojie’s arrest comes a little more than five months after the launch of an inspection targeting the company by the Chinese Cyberspace Administration, concerning “vulgar” content and online casinos. Last winter, in a case declared of national importance by the court and which mobilized investigators placed under the orders of the Ministry of Public Security, three managers of major accounts on the platform were sentenced to sentences of up to to six years in prison. This year, a dozen leaders from the tech, real estate and finance sectors disappeared from the media, before being officially arrested as part of an anti-corruption investigation.