Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba fired a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a colleague and a client.

The termination letter said he had spread fakes that had damaged the company’s reputation. The employee made her allegations public in August because she said that Alibaba did not act. He said the attacks took place during a business trip.

The colleague was later fired, but a criminal case against him was dropped. It is believed that the client is still being investigated by the police. The high-profile case highlighted the harassment women face at work in China.

The employee told the government-backed Dahe Daily that she was fired at the end of last month. She posted a copy of what she said was her termination letter. The letter said he had spread false information about the attack and that the company was not handling the case.

He added that this “generated a strong social concern and had a negative impact on the company”. The employee was quoted as saying: “I have not made any mistakes and I will certainly not accept this result, and in the future I will use legal means to protect my rights and interests.” The woman’s lawyer confirmed her dismissal for the New York Times.

Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce firm, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC. What are the allegations? The woman’s account of the incident was published in an 11-page document in which she said that her colleague raped her in a hotel room while she was unconscious after a “night of drunkenness”.

He launched a storm on social media on the Chinese platform Weibo, similar to Twitter. The woman claimed that her colleague, who held a management position within the company, forced her to travel to Jinan, which is about 900 km (560 miles) from Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, to meet with a client. .