Billionaire Jason Zeng 曾李青, Tencent Co-Founder And Taomee’s Largest Shareholder, Taken Away To “Assist An Investigation”?

• Posted by bbishop
• on July 5th, 2011

According to reports on Weibo and in the Chinese press, Jason Zeng (曾李青), the billionaire co-founder and former COO of Tencent who is the largest shareholder of newly public Taomee ($TAOM), has been taken away by authorities to “assist in an investigation”. The assumption is that the investigation relates to the massive China Mobile corruption case, but nothing has been confirmed.

It is not clear that this news should impact Taomee’s results. Mr. Zeng’s is non-Executive Chairman and this case is likely about something that happened during his tenure at Tencent. But news of Mr. Zeng’s involvement could hurt Taomee’s stock price. KongZhong’s ($KONG) shares cratered after news that CEO Wang LeiLei  was “assisting an investigation” a couple of months ago, and even though Mr. Wang has since returned to work the stock has yet to recover. Tencent’s shares so far appear unaffected by this news.

The expanding investigation into corruption in China’s telecommunications industry is going after some very powerful people, and even billionaires are not immune.

You can follow me @Bill on Stocktwits, @Niubi on Twitter and @Billbishop on Sina Weibo.

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