Adidas AG shares have fallen 4% after the German sportswear group said it was investigating allegations of corruption in China after receiving a letter from an anonymous whistleblower.
The letter, which briefly appeared on a Chinese social media platform, the Financial Times reported at the weekend, claims to have been written by “employees from Adidas China”.
It named several Chinese employees, including a senior manager involved with Adidas’s marketing budget in the country.
The world’s second-largest sportswear brand's senior staff were accused in the missive of embezzling “millions of euros”, according to the FT's sources.
Staff received kickbacks from external service providers commissioned by Adidas, the letter said, with one senior manager in China accused of having received "millions in cash" from suppliers as well as "physical items such as real estate".
The company told the newspaper that it had received the letter alerting it to "potential compliance violations" in China and said it is "intensively investigating this matter together with external legal counsel".