Swede awarded $18m in suit against boss

A young Swedish woman who sued her former Wall Street executive boss over lurid allegations of sexual conquest, betrayal and stalking was awarded $18m (€16.5m) by a federal jury.

Hanna Bouveng, 25, accused Benjamin Wey in an $850m lawsuit of using his power as owner of New York Global Group to coerce her into four sexual encounters before firing her on finding out she had a boyfriend.

The jury in federal court in Manhattan awarded her $2m in compensatory damages plus $16m in punitive damages on sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation claims. It rejected a claim of assault and battery.

Bouveng, who was raised in Vetlanda, Sweden, testified that soon after Wey hired her at New York Global Group, the CEO began a relentless quest to have sex with her.

She says he fired her six months later after she refused any more sexual contact and he found a man in her bed in the apartment he helped finance.

Wey, 43, also sought to defame Bouveng with blog postings accusing her of being a “street walker”, a “loose woman”, and an extortionist, her lawyers say.

Wey went to a Stockholm cafe in April 2014 where she was working a few months after she was fired from Global Group, attorney David Ratner told jurors.

“The message was: ‘Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I am going to find you and I am going to get you,” he said.

The married financier denied having sex with Bouveng.

He portrayed her as an opportunist who bragged that her grandfather was the billionaire founder of an aluminum company when they first met in the Hamptons in July 2013.