UPDATE: 9:24 AM PST - 9/21/2018
Panda Global have made another announcement regarding its investigation into the allegations of domestic abuse that have been brought against Street Fighter 5 player Inflitration. Due to the organization's ongoing investigation, Panda Global has decided to not allow Inflitration to compete at the 2018 edition of the Tokyo Game Show this weekend.
With the ongoing investigation, Infiltration will not be competing at TGS this weekend https://t.co/qujAQU4Ztx
— Panda Global (@PandaGlobal) September 21, 2018
Original Story
Allegations surrounding Street Fighter 5 Pro Seonwoo "Infiltration" Lee have emerged online over the past few days, concerning allegations of domestic abuse. Surfacing on Reddit earlier this week, an account named criminal-seonwoo-lee posted that the reason for Infiltration’s separation from his wife was due to domestic abuse and provided several transcripts of apparent audio recordings depicting the abuse. Unfortunately, the transcripts themselves are in Korean, and are also lacking any kind of judicial markings, so it’s difficult to ascertain whether they are legitimate.
Allegations also arose regarding apparent fraud committed by Infiltration involving Razer, during his time sponsored by the company, however Mark “MarkMan” Julio commented to deny the fraud allegations.
Panda Global, the organization that Infiltration plays under, has made an official statement regarding the allegations. In a Tweet earlier today, Panda Global stated: “We are taking the claims against Infiltration's alleged domestic violence seriously and are conducting a thorough investigation into these claims. If the claims are substantiated we will take appropriate action.”
We are taking the claims against Infiltration's alleged domestic violence seriously and are conducting a thorough investigation into these claims. If the claims are substantiated we will take appropriate action.
— Panda Global (@PandaGlobal) September 20, 2018
Currently, it is very difficult to determine exactly how accurate these allegations are, due to the language barriers and privacy laws around South Korea. Because of the age and name of the Reddit account posting the information, it does show an air of bias in the information being released. With some of the allegations already being denied by other prominent figures in the FGC (Razer fraud), whether the rest of the information provided is credible remains to be seen. Hopefully the situation will be investigated to its full extent by Panda Global, as well as the South Korean justice system, and fans can get back to cheering for their favorite fighters, rather than wondering about the truth behind accusations such as this.
As this is a developing story, any new information will be updated as it comes.
(Header image via shoryuken.com)
