LeEco founder transfers some assets to indebted public arm

It has been announced that Jia Yueting, the founder of indebted technology giant LeEco, has transferred the assets of e-commerce platform LeMall.com to Leshi Internet, in a move worth 92.9 million yuan, reports thepaper.cn.

File photo of Jia Yueting, founder of LeEco [Photo:IC]

This includes LeMall's assets, including the domain name of the website, the website's resources and the intellectual property rights.

Jia Yueting had personally held an 85-percent stake of LeMall.com, with the rest held by Leshi Internet.

This comes in the wake of Jia defying an order by Beijing securities regulators to return to China and deal with his company's debts.

The 44-year-old posted a letter through his Weibo account on Tuesday saying he will remain in the United States to continue to build up his Los Angeles-based electric car company Faraday Future, which he claims is "achieving major progress."

He also says his wife Gan Wei and brother Jia Yuemin will be entrusted with full power to deal with the debt issues of Leshi Internet, LeEco's publicly traded arm.

The Beijing branch of the China Securities Regulatory Commission ordered Jia to return to China before the end of 2017 to deal with his company's mounting debt problems.

LeEco has been struggling with financial problems since 2016 due to its aggressive expansion.

A court in Shanghai has already frozen some 1.2 billion yuan's worth of assets from both LeEco and Jia and Gan's personal accounts.

Jia has since resigned as CEO of LeEco's main listed unit and has remained in the United States since July.