This is the decision of Riot Games:

Riot Games has ruled that Peter Zhang is guilty of “unethical behavior” towards current and former TSM players and employees.

As a result, Peter Zhang will be permanently barred from working for any team or organization participating in any competition hosted by Riot Games.

So ultimately, this is a worldwide professional ban on Peter Zhang from working professionally in League of Legends or other titles like Valorant.

Who is Peter Zhang? Born in China, he worked for Team Solo Mid since 2018, first as a coach for the Academy team, and later as the “head of player development”. On March 18, 2022, Peter Zhang was dismissed from TSM. He was accused of having a conflict of interest.

“Team Solo Mid” is the most successful and largest e-sports team in LoL in the US. However, TSM is currently in a deep crisis.

Variety of accusations all revolving around money

What is he accused of? Zhang was accused by his team TSM of embezzling about $250,000 paid to two players between December 2021 and February 2022.

In addition, in October 2021, Zhang would have offered to sell the car of a former TSM player and convey the money to the player, but he would have retained more than half of the $80,000 he received for the car. As it is known from the discussion about the incident, it was the car of the world-class supporter SwordArt.

Zhang had also borrowed money from 8 TSM players and employees about $15,000, over which he had some authority as manager.

Investigations by Riot Games and TSM had come to all these conclusions – Peter Zhang had not been able to refute these allegations with conclusive evidence.

Zhang dismissed allegations as a “cultural misunderstanding,” then remained silent

What did Zhang say? When the accusations arose, Zhang had explained that it was all a cultural misunderstanding. In China, it is customary to borrow money from friends. He had needed the money for his sick grandmother (via dexerto).

However, he denies involvement in embezzling players’ salaries. Now, however, it seems that it is precisely these involvements that have been his undoing.

In LoL, champs are regularly reworked:

TSM wants to build a strong LoL team via “China connection”, fails

That’s what’s behind it: In the background of this case is a basic conflict:

• In the U.S., they want to sign “talented players” from China, hoping to discover young talent at a low cost
• However, China is such a jungle of corruption and impenetrable interconnections that you need intermediaries to be able to act as a US team there – so you need someone who knows the ropes
• Zhang intervened here and profited from the situation.

Ultimately, though, the China phase went horribly wrong for TSM. The Chinese players they brought in didn’t work out. And the intermediary Zhang apparently managed money into his own pocket.

The whole “China experiment” proved to be a total failure for TSM.

LoL: Legendary player says world’s greatest team damages his name in 2022