Earlier today, several top designers at HTC were arrested in Taipei under suspicion of fraudulent expense claims, as well as stealing trade secrets ahead of leaving the company to run a new mobile design firm in both Taiwan and mainland China. Five people were interrogated, with the most notable ones being Vice President of Product Design Thomas Chien (pictured above), R&D director Wu Chien Hung and design team senior manager Justin Huang (who also personally sketched out the One's design). Chien and Wu have been taken into custody, whereas the others were released on bail. Their offices were also raided yesterday for the investigation.
Reports say HTC chairwoman Cher Wang personally filed a complaint to Taiwan's Investigation Bureau, which has since learned that Chien, Wu and Huang planned to set up a new design company aimed at the mainland Chinese market, and that they would resign after claiming their mid-year bonuses yesterday. The real beef HTC has here is that it apparently caught Chien secretly downloading files related to the upcoming Sense 6.0 UI design, and then shared them with external contacts via e-mail.
The trio is also accused of making false commission fee claims for the One's aluminum chassis design. While the design was done in-house, the three designers partnered with an external design firm, used it to invoice HTC for over US$334,000 worth of commission fee between May and July, and then split the money between themselves.
We reached out to HTC for a statement on this matter, but the spokesperson doesn't have much to provide at this moment:
"The matter is under investigation by relevant authorities. We therefore refrain from further comments."
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Source: UDN (1), (2), China Times
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