Luckin Coffee sacks CEO, COO following accounting probe

(Reuters) – Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee Inc fired its chief executive and chief operating officers following an internal probe on fabrication of annual sales numbers, the company said https://bit.ly/3cD4jLC in a filing on Tuesday.

Jinyi Guo, a board director and a senior vice president, will take the top job on an interim basis.

Jenny Zhiya Qian and Jian Liu, who were CEO and COO respectively, will also leave the board.

Luckin, a major rival to Starbucks in China, revealed in April that much of its 2019 sales of about 2.2 billion yuan ($310.77 million) were fabricated by its COO and other employees, who had been suspended while the company carried out its investigation.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and China’s State Administration for Market Regulation are also investigating the company.

Luckin said on Tuesday it has been cooperating with and responding to inquiries from the regulatory agencies.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)