The billionaire co-founder of struggling Chinese technology giant LeEco has had personal assets frozen by a Shanghai court, state media reports.
Assets worth a combined 1.24bn yuan ($183m; £141m) belonging to Jia Yueting, his wife, and three affiliates have reportedly been blocked.
The ruling follows LeEco’s failure to pay interest due on bank loans taken out to fund its smartphone business.
Neither Mr Jia nor the company has commented on the reports.
LeEco was for a while known as the Netflix of China, a company that streamed content and eventually started making its own original material.
But it then drew comparison with the likes of Apple and Tesla when it began branching out into hardware, including a smart TV, phones and electric cars.
LeEco started selling devices in the US at the tail end of last year, but is now facing a cash crunch and has been forced to slash costs, including making job cuts.
Mr Jia, who resigned as chief executive in May but retains his position as chairman, recently admitted to shareholders that its financial problems were “more severe than we expected”.
In April, a $2bn deal to buy consumer electronics-maker Vizio was called off because of “regulatory headwinds”.
Source-BBC
