A local court document showed that the founder of Chinese smart phone Smartisan Technology has been prevented from taking fast trains because of the company's failure to comply with court rulings issued by contractual dispute.
Smartisan is a prominent player in China's smartphone sector, and is well-known for its brilliant founder Luo Yonghao, who has made headlines in recent years with bold statements, including the claim that he plans to buy Apple.
Lu is also prohibited from spending in luxury hotels, nightclubs, golf clubs, buying real estate, high-quality insurance and sending his children to expensive private schools, under an order from the Danyang District Court in east China.
The document said the order was issued after the court found the company had failed to comply with previous court rulings from a contractual dispute with a local electronic company.
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Sales of smartphones lag behind big players such as Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo. The social media company ByteDance, which owns the social platform TechTok, said earlier this year that it was developing a phone with Smartisan after obtaining a bunch of patents from it.
Smartisan launched a new phone on Thursday. In a video posted on the company's official Weibo account, Chief Operating Officer Wow Deshaw said most of the company's team had moved to Byte Dance after the deal to work on smartphones and educational devices, but the founder left the team for personal reasons.
In a statement posted on the social media platform for creditors and investors, Lu apologized and promised to repay all his debts in the future.
He said the company used to owe 600 million yuan (about 85 million US dollars) because of the deterioration of business since last year, but has managed to return 300 million yuan (about 42 million US dollars) over the past 10 months.