Wall Street mogul Benjamin Wey ordered to pay Swedish model US$18m in lurid sex case
A US federal jury has ordered the Chinese-born chief executive officer of a Manhattan investment firm to pay US$18 million to a former employee for sexual harassment and defamation.
Benjamin Wey, who runs New York Global Group, was accused of coercing former model Hanna Bouveng, 25, into having sex, firing her when she refused further advances and then ruining her reputation with a series of offensive blog posts that called her, among other things, a “street walker”.
The lurid two-week civil trial in New York drew lurid headlines in the city’s tabloids, pitting a young Swedish woman against a Wall Street financier 20 years her senior.
Jurors found in Bouveng’s favor on sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation claims but rejected her allegations of assault and battery.
The jury awarded US$2 million in compensatory damages and US$16 million in punitive damages, mostly for defamation, from Wey, NYGG and its FNL Media subsidiary. Bouveng’s lawsuit had sought US$850 million.
A lawyer for Wey said after the verdict that he would consider his legal options.
David Ratner, Bouveng’s lawyer, said she was “relieved that this ordeal that he has put her through is finally over”.
During the trial, Ratner told jurors Wey conducted a “relentless campaign” of harassment after hiring Bouveng in 2013, buying her gifts and demanding sexual favours in return.
Wey’s actions led to a “two-minute” sexual encounter in her apartment that left her feeling “degraded”, Ratner said. The two had sex three more times before Bouveng rejected further attempts, the lawyer said.
In April 2014, Wey discovered another man in Bouveng’s apartment, which he was helping to finance, and fired her, Ratner said. After she sued, he then wrote several disparaging articles in an online publication, TheBlot, controlled by FNL Media.
Wey’s lawyer, Glenn Colton, told jurors the two never had sex and that Bouveng attempted to extort him after she was fired for substandard work.
Bouveng, Colton said, torpedoed her career by spending too much time enjoying the city’s nightlife.
Wey, who was born in Tianjin but is now a US citizen, is facing other defamation claims stemming from TheBlot. In April, Georgetown University law professor Christopher Brummer filed a lawsuit in New York state court, claiming Wey waged an online smear campaign against him in retaliation for an adverse ruling from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Brummer was a member of an advisory panel that affirmed a FINRA ruling finding two of Wey’s business associates had engaged in fraud, according to the lawsuit.
Wey’s New York Global Group has specialised in linking Chinese companies with US capital markets. It is based in New York and Beijing.
