Chen Lei left China in early April 2020 and has since remained overseas for a long time.
Written by: Ma He, Foresight News
In January 2026, Xunlei Corporation and its subsidiary Wangxin Technology filed a civil lawsuit against Chen Lei and his core team on the grounds of "dispute over liability for damaging company interests", seeking compensation of up to 200 million yuan. The case has been accepted and registered by the relevant court in Shenzhen.
This lawsuit stems from a series of allegations in 2020, including Chen Lei's suspected embezzlement of company assets through fictitious transactions and fake contracts, as well as misappropriation of tens of millions of yuan for illegal crypto trading. To evade investigation, Chen Lei left China in early April 2020 and has since stayed overseas for a long time, leading to the temporary dismissal of the criminal investigation due to difficulties in evidence collection.
This incident not only exposes the chaos in Xunlei's internal governance but also reflects the wild growth and regulatory risks of early Chinese internet companies entering the crypto circle.
Chen Lei started learning programming in high school, was admitted to the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University for his undergraduate studies, went to the United States for further education, gained experience at Google and Microsoft, and then returned to China to join Tencent. Chen Lei is a typical example of a tech elite.
In 2014, he joined Xunlei as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), when Xunlei was facing the dilemma of declining download business. As a former Microsoft employee, Chen Lei is proficient in distributed computing and cloud computing technologies, which aligns with Xunlei's core P2P download business. From 2015 to 2017, he served as Co-CEO of Xunlei, and in July 2017, he officially became CEO and Director.
At this time, the global blockchain boom emerged, Bitcoin prices soared, and Chinese companies began to explore this emerging field. Chen Lei led Xunlei's transformation towards blockchain, seeing it as the key to the company's revival.
OneCloud: From Glory to Decline
Xunlei's iconic product entering the crypto circle is "OneCloud". In October 2017, Xunlei launched the OneCloud hardware, an intelligent shared storage device where users receive rewards of "OneCoin" by contributing idle bandwidth and storage resources.
This model quickly exploded in the market, with OneCloud sales surging and the price of LinkToken skyrocketing hundreds of times at one point. At that time, the highest daily turnover of OneCloud devices exceeded 100 million yuan, and even second-hand OneCloud devices originally priced at 399 yuan each were炒作 to 3000 yuan. The initial unofficial opening price of LinkToken was 0.1 yuan, and it once rose to nearly 10 yuan.
Chen Lei emphasized on many public occasions that this was Xunlei's "sharing economy + blockchain" innovation, aiming to build a distributed computing ecosystem. Xunlei also established a blockchain laboratory to promote projects such as Onething Chain, attempting to gain a foothold in the field of decentralized storage and computing.
However, at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, due to the impact of the "94 Ban" and the announcement by the China Internet Finance Association, OneCoin was renamed "LinkToken". The price of LinkToken continued to fall, triggering rights protection actions by some investors.
Having a Child with His Mistress and Misappropriating Tens of Millions for Crypto Trading
However, thanks to its blockchain layout, Xunlei's stock price once soared from $4 to $27.
Chen Lei's crypto circle layout seemed successful, but it埋下 hidden dangers: company resources were tilted towards blockchain, internal management was loose, and fund flows were unclear. In 2019, Xunlei's blockchain business faced bottlenecks. The global crypto market corrected, Chinese regulation tightened, and OneCloud sales declined. Chen Lei tried to expand edge computing through subsidiary Wangxin Technology, but internal conflicts gradually emerged.
According to insiders, Chen Lei had a close relationship with Dong Xue, then Senior Vice President, who recruited many fellow villagers from Heilongjiang and relatives into key positions, forming a "small circle".
This provided fertile ground for subsequent corruption allegations. In April 2020, Xunlei's board of directors suddenly removed Chen Lei from his position on suspicion of embezzlement. The new management's audit found that Chen Lei transferred funds through "Xing Ronghe" (a bandwidth supplier of Xunlei), a company he actually controlled. Founded in 2019, Xing Ronghe had frequent transactions with Wangxin Technology, and Chen Lei was suspected of inflating transaction links, preparing fake contracts, and siphoning off about 200 million yuan of company funds.
More notably, there are allegations of misappropriating funds for crypto trading. Audits show that Chen Lei is suspected of misappropriating tens of millions of yuan from the company for illegal crypto trading activities explicitly prohibited by the state.
Specific details include: through confidants such as Dong Xue, inserting personnel into finance, procurement and other departments, creating false reimbursements and overpaying salaries, with the funds eventually flowing into the crypto market. At that time, Bitcoin prices were rebounding from the low point in early 2020, and Chen Lei may have speculated on this. This behavior violates China's ban on virtual currency transactions and is suspected of embezzlement.
In addition, Chen Lei and Dong Xue had a child during their tenure, and their relationship was not purely that of colleagues, which further intensified the suspicion of interest transfer.
Public information shows that Dong Xue once served as Senior Vice President of Xunlei Group and Marketing Vice President of Wangxin Technology, in charge of core departments such as business market and human resources, and reported directly to Chen Lei, then CEO. The two had interactions as early as during their time at Tencent Cloud (Dong Xue was once an ordinary PR staff member at Tencent Cloud). After Chen Lei joined Xunlei in 2014, Dong Xue was gradually promoted and became his important confidant. As early as during Chen Lei's tenure, there were internal rumors that the two were in a romantic relationship (or an improper male-female relationship).
Xunlei's board of directors once asked Chen Lei face-to-face, and he guaranteed with his "Christian reputation" that the two were only colleagues and had no other relationship.
However, after Chen Lei was dismissed, the company's audit and investigation found that Chen Lei and Dong Xue had a child during their tenure at Xunlei. This directly overturned Chen Lei's previous guarantee, confirming that the two had an intimate personal relationship and formed a close interest community.
To evade investigation, Chen Lei left the country with Dong Xue in early April 2020, and transferred his shares to relatives at a low price, making it difficult for Xunlei to pursue accountability.
In October 2020, Xunlei reported Chen Lei and others to the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau on suspicion of embezzlement, and the police filed a case for investigation. The company announced an appeal for Chen Lei to return to China to cooperate, but to no avail. The criminal case was dismissed at the end of 2022 due to Chen Lei's overseas滞留 and obstacles in evidence collection.
Five years later, in 2026, Xunlei restarted the civil lawsuit, with the focus still on fund transfer and misappropriation for crypto trading. New evidence shows that Chen Lei dismissed dozens of core employees before his dismissal, causing brain drain and compensation losses.
If the case is won, it may provide a model for Chinese corporate governance. Chen Lei's journey from starting Xunlei's blockchain innovation to being suspected of misappropriating funds for crypto trading reflects the opportunities and pitfalls of the early crypto circle. Xunlei once revived with the blockchain concept, but collapsed due to regulation and internal corruption. Chen Lei's case warns that technological innovation must comply with regulations, and if personal ambition crosses the line, it will surely lead to serious consequences.