- The axed co-founder of a San Francisco tech company has been named in a bombshell lawsuit.
- The suit accuses ex-Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng of forcing his assistant to sign a “slave contract.”
- Lanng vehemently denied the accusations in the lawsuit in a statement to Business Insider.
The axed CEO and co-founder of a San Francisco-based tech company has been accused in a bombshell lawsuit of forcing his former executive assistant to sign a “slave contract” and subjecting her to multiple years of “sexual abuse, torture and assault.”
The plaintiff, only identified as “Jane Doe” in the suit filed last week in a California court, says in the court documents that former Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng sexually trafficked her around the world under the guise of business trips for the fintech company.
The lawsuit alleges that Lanng made the woman sign the “shocking and repulsive” sex “slave contract” that named him as “master” several months into her employment at Tradeshift, causing her work and personal life to spiral into “a dark abyss of unwanted sexual horror.”
The abuse she endured, the lawsuit says, included the woman “being bound against her will and beaten to the point of bleeding.”
The plaintiff claims in the suit that she was fired in May 2020 after she complained to the company’s human resources department, its co-founders and members of its board of directors “about the rape, sexual abuse, torture and assault she was suffering at the hands” of Laang under the “slave contract.
Lanng — who was fired by Tradeshift this past September for what the company called “gross misconduct on multiple grounds” that included “allegations of sexual assault and harassment” — vehemently denied the accusations in the lawsuit against him in a lengthy statement to Business Insider.
In fact, Lanng, who did not dispute the existence of the “slave contract,” claimed that he and his accuser were in a “consensual sexual relationship” before he hired her at Tradeshift.
Lanng said their relationship ended eight months after she joined the company. Business Insider obtained a screenshot of an email exchange between Lanng and the plaintiff, which shows Lanng sharing a Google Doc entitled “Slave Contract” with his assistant in April 2014 — about four months after her lawyers say she was hired at the company.
“The shocking and vile claims in the lawsuit are categorically false, and I reject allegations that I subjected someone to any form of abuse during my tenure as CEO or at any other time of my life,” Lanng said in the statement, calling his decision to hire someone he was dating a “grave error of judgment.”
The former Tradeshift CEO said that his accuser worked at the company for five more years after their relationship ended and that her position was later eliminated in a round of layoffs. He called her accusations “a cynical and callous affront to victims of sexual violence and human trafficking.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys, Bryan Freedman and Miles Cooley, blasted Lanng’s comments in a statement to Business Insider, saying, “In what world is a slave contract between a CEO and his employee remotely consensual? That Lanng is misrepresenting timelines and duration of the abuse to excuse his behavior is truly reprehensible.”
“Our client entirely rejects the notion that she had a ‘consensual’ slave relationship with her boss,” the lawyers said. “As if the allegations are not horrific enough, the corporate coverup and malfeasance as alleged in the complaint takes this tragedy to another sick level. We look forward to setting forth all the facts in the course of discovery and litigation.”
The attorneys told Business Insider that their client started her employment at Tradeshift in January 2014 and that the “slave contract” began in April of that year.
The plaintiff says in the lawsuit, which also names Tradeshift as a defendant, that Lanng’s “horrific treatment” of her was “known by and tacitly approved of by Tradeshift’s” other founders and board of directors.
The lawsuit, which describes Tradeshift as a “toxic, hostile work environment,” alleges that the plaintiff was also sexually abused by former Tradeshift board members Morten Lund and Morten Sondergaard.
Lund and Sondergaard did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Business Insider on Wednesday.
A Tradeshift spokesperson told Business Insider that the company “denies the allegations in the claim insofar as they are made against the company.”
In Lanng’s statement, he said, “As a co-founder and CEO of Tradeshift for more than a decade, I want to be very clear: Tradeshift never condoned or concealed sexual harassment claims.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff has undergone “physical, psychological and emotional trauma and harm” as a result of the sex abuse she endured.
