‘ 2- minute’ warning
‘ Sex- harass’ CEO ‘ threat’
The Wall Street CEO on trial for pressuring a pretty Swedish underling into sleeping with him wrote her a menacing email to try scaring her out of filing a sexualharassment claim — trashing her looks and threatening to reveal all her “dirty laundry” if she sued him.
“Are you looking into the mirror? Latenight partying and excessive alcohol will kill your youth. Have you looked at your face lately?” Benjamin Wey, 43, wrote to Hanna Bouveng, 25, in April 2014.
“More wrinkles everywhere, particularly the forehead, isn’t it? Wait another two years, they will get worse.”
The jealous Wey— who lasted just two minutes the first time he bedded the former model, her lawyer said in court — also tried to talk Bouveng into dumping her boyfriend.
“Hanna, I could never understood how a talented young lady like Hanna would date a man with a criminal history and works as a nightclub promoter that kisses or fks hundreds of other girls,” the email reads.
Wey also tried to scare her by playing up the costs of litigation and the public exposure she would face.
“Let me share with you about the American way of court proceedings. In a lawsuit, all of Hanna’s dirty laundry will come out to become public information, the same dirty laundry will come out . . . drugs, prostitution, lies, sex, nightclubs, alcohol, violence,” wrote Wey, the CEO of New York Global Group.
Bouveng is suing Wey for $ 850 million, claiming he forced her to dress provocatively and pressured her into sleeping with him in December 2013 at the Tribeca apartment he rented for her.
He then allegedly fired her when she complained.
The email was brought into evidence Wednesday when Bouveng’s female friend Chemme Koluman took the stand to testify, in part, about how devastated Bouveng was when she confessed she had slept withWay, her boss.
“She came up to the apartment and she broke down and started crying,” Koluman said.
“She told me that she was too embarrassed and she felt disgusting and it was something she really wanted to forget about.”
An eightperson jury is hearing the sexualharassment case in Manhattan federal court.
Bouveng attorney David Ratner asked Koluman whether Wey — who was enraged when he walked into Bouveng’s Tribeca apartment to find her boyfriend in the bed — would have been angry if he had instead found her naked in the bed.
“Obviously not,” the pretty Koluman answered with a smile.
In his opening statements, Ratner mocked Wey over his alleged selfishness in bed.
“He has sex with her and it’s over in two minutes. She was horrified and debased,” the lawyer told jurors.
Wey is expected to testify Thursday morning.