Private equity CEO ordered to pay sexual abuse survivor $5.6 million in damages
Benjamin Wey was described by his former intern as a ‘pyschopath'
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Your support makes all the difference.A New York judge has ordered a financier to pay out more than $5 million in compensation to his former intern who said she was pressured into sex and was the victim of lies he posted online.
Hanna Bouveng was awarded $16 million last June for punitive damages in her civil lawsuit against the Chief Executive Officer of venture capital firm New York Global Group, Benjamin Wey.
The judge, Paul Gardephe, has since reduced the payment to $4 million in punitive and $1.65 million in compensatory damages.
Judge Gardephe cited a “lopsided ratio” on the two sums as a reason for cutting back, according to the New York Post.
Mr Wey took to twitter to call out his "victory".
Ms Bouveng, 26, has until 10 April to decide whether she wants to accept the money or press for a new trial. Mr Wey has been denied a motion for a new trial on the grounds of liability.
She had sued 44-year-old Mr Wey for allegedly pressuring him into having sex and lying to her friends and family and writing online that she was addicted to drugs and was a sex worker.
When Mr Wey, previously described as the real "Wolf of Wall Street", reportedly found another man in Ms Bouveng’s bedroom, he kicked her out of the apartment he rented for her and fired her.
“I saw a 6-foot-tall homeless black man named James lying on her bed,” Mr Wey wrote to Bouveng’s father, Nils Sundqvist, in an e-mail which was used as court evidence. ““The man was totally naked, dirty, totally drunk and perhaps on illegal drugs.”
He called her a “Swedish party girl” on website TheBlot.com, where he has written prolifically on sports, celebrities and business “advice”.
Ms Bouveng described Mr Wey as a “pyschopath” and said he tried to “control and isolate her”.
Ms Bouveng’s lawyer declined to comment.
Mr Wey has since been indicted on alleged stock manipulation that resulted in $20 million in illegal profits, according to court papers seen by the New York Post.
Mr Wey describes himself as an award-winning journalist and a business success story as a Chinese immigrant with "just $62 in his pocket" before he made it to US business school.
In an article on maternity leave on TheBlot.com, he wrote: “One of the things I, Benjamin Wey, have noted is that CEOs all have their own personal quirks, and successful companies simply make allowances for that.”
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