Exclusive: Grindr’s U.S. security review disclosures contradicted statements made to others – By Echo Wang (Reuters) / Mar 29 2021
NEW YORK (Reuters) – When Grindr Inc’s Chinese owner sold the popular dating app to an investor consortium last year to comply with a U.S. national security panel order, the parties to the deal gave information to authorities that contradicted disclosures to potential investors and Chinese regulators, Reuters has learned.
FILE PHOTO: Grindr app is seen on a mobile phone in this photo illustration taken in Shanghai, China March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song/Illustration/File Photo
They told the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that James Lu, a Chinese-American businessman who is now Grindr’s chairman, had no previous business relationship with a key adviser to the seller, a man named Ding’an Fei, according to a Reuters review of the parties’ written submissions to CFIUS.
Fei, a former private equity executive, was acting as an adviser to Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd, Grindr’s owner at the time, on the deal, the documents show.
“The investors and Ding’an Fei have at no time conducted business together in their personal capacities prior to the proposed transaction,” Kunlun and the investor group, called San Vicente Holdings LLC, wrote to CFIUS in a response dated March 27, 2020.
