Software developer arrested for deleting business partner's data

A software developer has been arrested for allegedly breaching the computer system of his business partner’s company out of retaliation, police said on Monday.

The suspect, a man surnamed Gong, became the business partner of a window manufacturer, surnamed Pei, in July of 2014.

The two established a software company which sold manufacturing management software Gong developed, but later had disagreements over business development, Songjiang District police said.

Pei stopped paying Gong monthly salaries from January this year out of suspicion that he authorized the software without approval from the company, which made Gong even more angry.

Gong, who had access to the computer system of Pei’s window manufacturer, allegedly deleted all data from the system on March 22. The whole system was found to have totally collapsed five days later, causing tens of thousands of yuan in losses to the company, police said.

Police soon tracked Gong down, and he has since confessed.