Director of Listed Chinese Company Embezzled $8 Million, Uses Funds to Purchase Bitcoin Mining Rigs – A prosecutor in Beijing, China, has apparently approved the arrest of a former director of a public listed big data firm who is accused of purchasing bitcoin mining rigs with fraudulently obtained funds.
According to Zhongchang Big Data’s filings with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the company’s director, Li Qunnan, is accused of embezzling roughly $8 million (55.53 million yuan) from the company.
Qunnan, a former chairman of Zhongchang Big Data, is suspected of misappropriating funds during his time as a top executive of the company, according to one Chinese language report. Zhongchang Big Data said it only learned of the director’s illegal acts after the company’s new management conducted an “examination of the subsidiary firms to standardize the corporate governance” in November 2021.
Following the inspection, which identified Qunnan as the culprit misappropriating funds, the former director is said to have issued a statement to Zhongchang officials denying the charges.
Despite Qunnan’s denial, Zhongchang officials have asserted that he is the perpetrator, citing evidence to back up their claim. For example, the executives claim that their company paid $4.1 million for “servers” between January and September 2021, but that they do not appear in its books.
The servers were identified as “Whatsminer mining machine (model: M31S-76T44W), supercomputing server (model S10Pro),” according to the report.
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Director of Listed Chinese Company Embezzled $8 Million, Uses Funds to Purchase Bitcoin Mining Rigs – In addition to paying for the bitcoin mining machines, Zhongchang claims the former director used corporate funds to pay $3.8 million in hosting fees. Meanwhile, Qunnan has reportedly refused to cooperate with investigators and is believed to be out of the country, according to the article.
