A University of Minnesota student who filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Chinese billionaire Richard Liu said he raped her after encouraging her to drink too much.
The lawsuit, which names Liu and his company, JD.com, as defendants, accuses Liu of arranging to have the woman, then a 21-year-old undergraduate at the Carlson School of Management, lured to a dinner in her honor at an Uptown restaurant. There, he encouraged her to drink to excess, the lawsuit said, then had her driven back to her apartment, where he raped her.
The company paid the bill for the dinner and Liu's staff helped facilitate the assault, the suit alleges. The woman is named in the lawsuit, but the Star Tribune does not identify alleged sexual assault victims without their permission.
Liu's attorney, Jill Brisbois, declined to comment on pending litigation but said, "We feel strongly that this suit is without merit and will vigorously defend against it."
The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court, said the woman suffered bodily injury and mental anguish, causing her to drop out of the university fall semester.
Liu is listed by Forbes magazine as the 272nd richest person in the world, the suit noted, and JD.com, which operates a business in China similar to Amazon, is publicly traded in the United States.
Liu is listed by both his Americanized name, Richard Liu, and by his Chinese name, Liu Qiangdong.
Liu was arrested on Aug. 31 after the student made the allegations. Four months later, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office declined to charge Liu with rape, saying it could not be assured it could convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. But the standard in a civil case, were it to go to a jury, is the "preponderance of evidence," making it more likely the woman would prevail, according to Joseph Daly, an emeritus professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul.