China Mobile Restructuring Comes After Major Corruption Cases Uncovered

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen several reports about the reshuffling China Mobile has been doing in its high-level offices all over China. It turns out that wasn’t just the executives playing musical chairs, it is actually one way of fighting corruption within the massive state-owned company.

Moving high-level players from place to place within the company is meant to ensure that they don’t have time to form deep relationships with local government officials and businessmen in any given place, which seems to lead to corruption. Insiders told the Yicai Daily that an internal report from last year implicated 11 China Mobile employees in corruption cases involving over 500 million RMB ($79 million). This report was delivered to China’s State Council, a high-level governing body. The State Council then delivered comments that will shape China Mobile’s strategic approach this year.

The employee shuffling was step one, but insiders say the company will also likely be auditing and reforming internally, and those reforms might include removing personnel from their positions.

This is far from the first time the telecom giant has been associated with corruption. A flurry of reports last summer implicated China Mobile employees in accepting bribes and other forms of corruption, and ultimately led to a government corruption probe into all three of the major telecoms.

[Yicai Daily via Sina Tech]