(Yicai) May 15 -- The employee reported to have accepted bribes worth more than CNY92 million (USD12.7 million) in one year from merchants applying to open stores on a Chinese e-commerce platform in Hangzhou was working at Alibaba Group Holding, Yicai found.

The police in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is headquartered, recently cracked the corruption case involving a private e-commerce company, China Central Television reported yesterday. Yicai tried to contact Alibaba without success.

The employee, surnamed Wang, assesses the qualifications of furniture suppliers that submit applications to open flagship stores on the e-commerce platform, CCTV noted, citing Hangzhou's police. He also oversees preliminary reviews, it added.

Wang clearly marked the prices for his services when assessing shops' qualifications, meaning that merchants needed to make varied facilitating payments to get their shops opened, according to the police. Over 400 merchants that failed to conform to the platform's requirements were approved under his rule-violating assessment, it added.

The funds involved in the case tallied CNY130 million (USD18 million), the police noted. Wang has been prosecuted on the suspicion of receiving bribes as a non-state functionary.

With the assistance of the police, the e-commerce platform re-designed its reviewing procedures, which use Big Data technology, to reduce human interventions in the assessing process for merchants' qualifications, according to the report.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev