China has fined ride-hailing group Didi Chuxing RMB 8 billion ($1.18 billion) and hit its founders with additional penalties over “serious” and “vile” breaches of the country’s data security laws, reports the Financial Times.
The Cyberspace Administration of China probe has devastated the Chinese technology group’s business and forced it to delist from the New York Stock Exchange roughly a year after its $4.4 billion blockbuster IPO last June.
The unprecedented investigation into Didi came as part of Beijing’s sweeping regulatory crackdown on the tech sector, leading to a reckoning on Wall Street about investing in Chinese companies and marking a setback for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Didi’s largest shareholder.