????近幾年來，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司阿里巴巴-淘寶已成為全球最知名的中國公司之一。這要歸功于公司自身的成功及其自負(fù)又魅力超凡的創(chuàng)始人兼總裁馬云。是他在1999年創(chuàng)建了這家在線商貿(mào)公司。2007年，其B2B平臺阿里巴巴公司赴香港證交所上市并募得17億美元。在當(dāng)時，這是互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司有史以來規(guī)模第二大的首次公開募股（IPO），僅次于谷歌。而其電子商務(wù)公司淘寶則與eBay展開苦斗，并在幾年前成功地將這一全球巨頭逐出中國市場。

????然而日前，阿里巴巴在前進道路上首次遭遇重大公關(guān)危機：該公司稱，在過去兩年間，2,326家大宗賣家在近百名阿里巴巴員工的協(xié)助下欺詐客戶。這些賣家向公司交付一定費用，以在網(wǎng)站上售賣貨物，并被稱為“金牌供應(yīng)商”。馬云表示，這些賣家是有組織的“詐騙分子”。因為該丑聞，阿里巴巴首席執(zhí)行官衛(wèi)哲與其副手——首席運營官李旭暉于日前雙雙引咎辭職。阿里巴巴公司強調(diào)，他們二人都并未卷入此次欺詐事件。不過兩人都毅然承擔(dān)了相應(yīng)責(zé)任（這是日本式公司責(zé)任在中國的體現(xiàn)）。

????衛(wèi)哲今年40歲。2006年他加盟阿里巴巴并領(lǐng)導(dǎo)了首次公開募股成功進行。他還協(xié)助馬云落實了阿里巴巴的一大愿景，即使之成為國外客戶與中國中小型公司進行交易的終點站。毫無疑問，在公眾眼中，馬云已經(jīng)像史蒂夫·喬布斯或比爾·蓋茨一樣，與自己的公司血肉相連。（其公司一年一度的網(wǎng)商大會（Alifest），實際上成了阿里巴巴和淘寶用戶的布道大會，而瘦骨嶙峋的馬云則是這些用戶的精神領(lǐng)袖。）衛(wèi)哲則是他完美無缺的副手，一直成功塑造著一幅淡定自若、實力非凡的形象。

????阿里巴巴國際公司事務(wù)副總裁約翰·斯比利奇表示，從營業(yè)收入的角度看，此次欺詐規(guī)模為每筆約1,200美元，共計280萬美元，因此是“微不足道的”。對雅虎公司而言，這可能是這一丑聞中唯一的亮點。目前雅虎在中國的運營由阿里巴巴的母公司負(fù)責(zé)，該公司擁有其39%的股份。而阿里巴巴集團前日在香港股市的股價下跌超過8%。當(dāng)然，此次丑聞成為阿里巴巴的重大事件——以及該公司如此不遺余力將其消滅于萌芽狀態(tài)的——的原因，正在于其銷售隊伍的內(nèi)部人員顯然共同參與了欺詐。據(jù)公司發(fā)布在其旗下一家網(wǎng)站上的對本次丑聞的描述，阿里巴巴銷售人員不管是出于有意還是無意，都“協(xié)助有組織的中國犯罪團伙在阿里巴巴網(wǎng)站上建立了‘金牌供應(yīng)商’店面，以便其為了欺詐購買者而以合法經(jīng)營的面貌出現(xiàn)”。

????在致員工的一封電子郵件中，馬云做了更深入的剖析。他表示，公司內(nèi)部審核團隊成員“有意縱容欺詐者成為（金牌供應(yīng)商）以便自己能‘獲得更高業(yè)績’并收受傭金”。（目前尚不清楚是否有員工從欺詐者處獲取酬勞。）

????當(dāng)然，電子商務(wù)網(wǎng)站上形形色色的欺詐屢見不鮮。Alibaba168.com是一個買家和賣家交流購銷經(jīng)驗的網(wǎng)站。日前，就在這個網(wǎng)站上爆出了一起欺詐事件。一位遠(yuǎn)在中國西部省份新疆的阿里巴巴客戶付了12,000元（約1,846美元）從一個供應(yīng)商那兒買一批核桃，想將這批貨轉(zhuǎn)手賣掉賺上一筆。但他沒有通過支付寶（與Paypal類似）轉(zhuǎn)賬，而是直接把錢匯給了賣家。結(jié)果他血本無歸。

????阿里巴巴表示，導(dǎo)致衛(wèi)哲辭職的眾多案例都是“銷售”低價消費電子產(chǎn)品。欺詐行為的比例“似乎在一般電子商務(wù)網(wǎng)站的風(fēng)險范圍之內(nèi)”。然而，對阿里巴巴公司而言，問題在于所有被騙的客戶都位于中國境外，而按Spelich所說，該公司的“存在理由”，即其創(chuàng)建之使命，是將中國賣家與國外買家連結(jié)起來（阿里巴巴目前正努力吸引印度和其他地方的賣家使用其網(wǎng)站）。

????幾年前我第一次采訪馬云時，他以慣有的激昂語調(diào)談起一個問題。在他看來這是電子商務(wù)能否在中國，尤其是在阿里巴巴-淘寶上蓬勃發(fā)展的關(guān)鍵問題：“誠信”。這意味著，顧客必須相信他們準(zhǔn)備在線購買的商品的質(zhì)量，而更重要的是，他們必須相信，他們不會被那些用互聯(lián)網(wǎng)實施詐騙的匿名賣家所騙。而對所有這些，我們只能說，在中國，建立商業(yè)道德仍然任重而道遠(yuǎn)。

????現(xiàn)在事實表明，欺詐活動已經(jīng)在馬云的一批員工的協(xié)助下進行了整整兩年之久（再重申一遍，阿里巴巴共有5,000名銷售，公司表示，約100人卷入了此次欺詐事件。）這就解釋了，雖然單從數(shù)量上看，這似乎只是一場小規(guī)模欺詐，但公司為何對此事件反應(yīng)如此強烈，并且公開表態(tài)。正如衛(wèi)哲日前讓人震驚的辭職行動所表明的，此事其實非同小可。因為，馬云從一開始就深知，如果客戶不再信任阿里巴巴，阿里巴巴也就不會再有大量客戶了。

????譯者：清遠(yuǎn)

????For several years now, the internet firm Alibaba-Taobao has been one of the most prominent Chinese companies on the planet—thanks both to its success and to its brash, charismatic founder and chairman, "Jack O' (Yun) Ma, who started the online commerce company in 1999. Its business-to-business platform, Alibaba.com, went public on Hong Kong's stock exchange in 2007 and raised $1.7 billion—at the time the second biggest internet IPO ever, behind only Google (GOOG). Its online consumer sales company, Taobao, went mano-a-mano with eBay (EBAY) and effectively ran the global giant out of China a few years ago.

????Yesterday for the first time, Alibaba hit a big public bump in the road: It reported that 2,326 high volume sellers who pay a fee to the company to pedal their wares on the site – "gold suppliers," as they're called—defrauded customers over the course of two years, with the assistance of nearly 100 Alibaba.com employees. Ma said the sellers were organized "fraudsters." As a result of the scandal, Alibaba.com CEO David Wei, and his deputy, COO Elvis Lee, both resigned yesterday. Neither, the company stressed, are implicated in the fraud; both were falling on their swords to accept responsibility. (Japanese style corporate accountability comes to China.)

????Wei, 40, had joined Alibaba in 2006 and oversaw the successful IPO. He also helped Ma execute the vision of Alibaba.com as a destination for customers outside of China to buy from small and medium-sized companies operating inside the country. Ma, to be sure, has become as publicly associated with his company as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates have with theirs. (His company's annual "Alifest" is practically a revival meeting for Alibaba-Taobao users, and the waif-like Ma is their inspirational leader.) But Wei was his polished deputy, and he unfailingly projected an image of calm competence.

????The scale of the fraud amounted to about $1,200 per incident, totaling around $2.8 million, and thus is "immaterial", as John Spelich, vice president for international corporate affairs says, from an earnings standpoint. That is probably the only bright spot in this scandal for Yahoo (YHOO), whose Chinese operations are run by Alibaba's parent company, of which it owns 39%. The Alibaba group's stock price in Hong Kong today fell more than 8%. Of course, what makes the scandal a huge deal for Alibaba—and why the company has gone to extraordinary lengths to snuff it out—is the apparent involvement of insiders on the sales staff in perpetrating the fraud. Either willfully or out of negligence, the Alibaba sales people "helped organized Chinese criminal rings establish Alibaba.com 'Gold Supplier' storefronts so they could pose as legitimate businesses in order to defraud buyers," according to an account of the scandal the company published on a website it runs.

????In an e mail to employees, Ma went further. He said the company's internal investigation team members "knowingly allowed fraudsters to become [Gold Suppliers] so that they could 'make their numbers' and receive commission income.'' (It is unclear as of yet if any of the insiders received payments from any of the fraudsters.)

????Garden variety fraud on e-commerce sites is not uncommon, of course. Yesterday, on a web site called Alibaba168.com, where buyers and sellers exchange information about their experiences on the site, there was an account of an Alibaba customer in Xinjiang, in far western China, who paid 12,000 renminbi (about $1,846) to buy a bunch of walnuts from a supplier, which he then hoped to turn around and resell at a profit. The buyer did not execute his transaction via Alipay, Alibaba's Paypal equivalent, instead forwarding the money direct to the seller. He was ripped off.

????Alibaba says the scope of the fraudulent activity in the cases that led to Wei's resignation, which in many cases involved the "sale" of low priced consumer electronics products, "appeared to be within the risk range for e-commerce sites in general." The problem for the company is that all of the customers defrauded were outside of China, and, as Spelich says, the company's "raison d'être," its founding mission, was to link Chinese sellers with buyers abroad (Alibaba is now trying aggressively to lure sellers in India and elsewhere to use the site.)

????Several years ago, the first time I ever interviewed Ma, he spoke in his usual passionate tone on the one issue he saw as key to whether e-commerce would take off in China in general, and at Alibaba-Taobao in particular: "Trust," he said. Meaning, customers had to trust in the quality of goods they were going to be able to buy online, but more importantly, they had to be confident they were not going to be fleeced by faceless sellers using the Internet to perpetrate their fraud. And all this in a country where, shall we say, business ethics are still something of a work in progress.

????It turns out that fleecing is precisely what was happening for two years—with the aid of a handful of Ma's own employees. (Again, Alibaba employs 5000 sales people, and around 100 were involved in the fraud, the company says.) Which explains why the company has reacted so strongly, and so publicly, to an episode that, by the numbers, seems to be but a minor scandal. As Wei's stunning resignation yesterday demonstrates, it's not. As Jack Ma understood from the beginning, if the customers can't trust Alibaba, then Alibaba isn't going have many customers.