LeEco photo: VCG

 
LeEco, formerly known as Leshi Internet Formation and Technology Corp, said it was fined 240 million yuan ($36.67 million) by the Beijing municipal securities watchdog for financial fraud conducted in the 10 consecutive years from 2007-16, domestic news portal yicai.com reported. 

Jia Yueting, the firm's founder who fled to the US in late 2017, was fined 241 million yuan. Jia was banned from China’s security markets for life and LeEco was delisted in July 2020.

Jia was once a flamboyant technology entrepreneur and LeEco was a darling of the Chinese stock market. In 2014, Jia said his ambition was to make "the best smart automobile." 

LeEco once chartered planes to fly reporters from China to the US to cover its Faraday Future (FF) project.

At the time of delisting, the company founded by Jia in 2007 still had a market value of 718 million yuan, having shrunk 99 percent from its peak of 170 billion yuan.  

Some of the country's richest individuals and financial institutes as well as 280,000 investors suffered losses because of LeEco’s fall.

Heavily indebted Jia, also the founder of electric car star-up FF, announced personal bankruptcy in July 2020.

LeEco creditors have also repeatedly traveled to the US for debt collection purposes.

A California court froze Jia's stake in California-based FF and issued a protection order for the luxury house he owns in California in 2018.


Global Times