(Bloomberg) — Minneapolis police have released more details on their investigation into the alleged rape of a student by Chinese internet billionaire Richard Liu, drawing attention to conflicting accounts from the parties involved.
The files shed new light on a case that transfixed China. Liu, founder of giant online retailer JD.com Inc., was arrested in August last year and accused of raping a 21-year-old female Chinese undergraduate. U.S. prosecutors subsequently decided not to press charges against the billionaire, who was participating in a University of Minnesota executive program at the time.
Interview transcripts show the alleged victim at one point told police she wanted money. They concluded after an investigation it was unclear if a crime had actually taken place. According to the files, a police sergeant asked the student if she wanted authorities to investigate the billionaire. “No, I want it to go away,” she was cited as saying in one transcript, adding that she wanted an apology “and money.”
In April, the student, Liu Jingyao, filed a civil suit against the chief executive and JD itself, seeking monetary damages. She claimed he forcibly assaulted her in her apartment after plying her with alcohol at a dinner. After police arrived at the apartment to investigate, the JD founder allegedly tried to intimidate her in an exchange recorded on officers’ body cameras, according to the lawsuit.
The rape accusations hung over JD.com’s stock in 2018, because Liu’s outsize control of voting rights closely linked the firm’s fate to his own. In China, he’s seen as a visionary founder and the driving force behind one of the country’s most successful internet companies.
The billionaire was attending a doctor of business administration program in Minnesota last year when the alleged rape took place, after a dinner attended by the student and more than a dozen Chinese male executives. According to police documents, the billionaire said their sex was consensual. He said she invited him to her apartment and suggested they take a shower together, according to the documents.
“The evidence released today again reaffirms our strong belief from the very beginning that Mr. Liu is innocent,” Jill Brisbois, Richard Liu’s attorney, said in a statement that JD provided.
To contact the reporters on this story: Lulu Yilun Chen in Hong Kong at [email protected];Michelle Fay Cortez in Minneapolis at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at [email protected], Edwin Chan
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