Former Tradeshift CEO 'who kept his assistant as a sex slave' was pictured hanging out with actor Kevin Spacey at a 2016 event – a meeting where the victim said the tech mogul tortured her.
Christian Lanng, 45, was fired in October after being accused of enslaving his assistant in a “sexual slave contract,” according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
Despite the allegations, the Denmark-born mogul has repeatedly posted on social media against sexism and boasted in a previous interview about creating a “respectful culture” towards women at the company.
The former head of a multibillion-dollar software company allegedly forced an employee, identified only as Jane Doe, into a “dark abyss” of sexual abuse and sadistic torture.
The lawsuit revealed that one of these incidents occurred in Davos, Switzerland, where Lanng posed with Spacey at the 2016 World Economic Forum annual meeting.
Former Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng, 45, was fired in October after being accused of enslaving his assistant with a 'sexual slave contract'
Lanng posed next to actor Kevin Spacey at the 2016 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where Jane Doe said one of the sexual incidents between her and Lanng took place.
Spacey was accused of sexual assault but was acquitted of all charges in July in connection with a case in London.
Lanng has hit back at the claims against him, saying he is being “shamed” about his private life in a malicious campaign for “personal financial gain”.
The lawsuit, reported by Mercury newsalleged that Lanng forced his assistant to sign a contract that allowed him to “inflict physical pain on her in various ways, including urinating on her and routinely penetrating her with foreign objects.”
Lanng was fired from the Bay Area startup he co-founded in 2010 for “gross misconduct on multiple grounds,” with Tradeshift saying it made the decision after “serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment” against the CEO.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Lanng claimed he and his accuser had a consensual relationship, and said the lawsuit was fueled by “malicious motives” that “underscore an ugly paradox in our society.”
'We celebrate sex as long as it is captured in fiction for our entertainment. But in real life we condemn and judge. “I'm hopeful that shaming consenting adults for what they do in their bedrooms will one day be seen as despicable, like 'coming out' someone's sexual orientation in the 20th century,” he said.
'Words cannot adequately express how disheartening it is that a highly distorted version of the extremely intimate details of a personal, consensual sexual relationship is now not only in the public domain, but is also being used to discredit me for personal financial gain.'
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco County Superior Court against Lanng and Tradeshift, alleging the abuse began within months of her hiring at the tech company.
Tradeshift is a cloud network serving more than 1.5 million businesses.
A copy of the alleged slave contract reported by the Mercury News was reportedly nine pages long and contained provisions requiring Doe to serve as a sex slave for the CEO and perform demeaning tasks while on the job.
The contract stated that Doe would always be sexually available to her master if he needed sex, and would never deny him sex, even when he was not wearing the collar.”
It also said that whenever she saw Lanng “in private for the first time, she had to kneel down and ask if she could do anything for him.”
Lanng was fired from Tradeshift in October for 'gross misconduct on multiple grounds' after 'serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment' against the CEO
An “at work” section of the lawsuit detailed a chilling order that said Doe was told she was free to “act independently as long as she remembers that she is her master's property and that she is to please him and for no other reason.'
It is also alleged that she was required to perform mandatory sex acts, keep her weight between 130 and 155 pounds and was ordered to dress “in a decent, feminine manner, preferably skirts, dresses and stockings.”
Doe was reportedly given a “day collar” to wear around her neck when she was out with Lanng. The contract also stated that he would “work to shape the slave toward his goal: the perfect woman.”
The so-called contract allowed for “any punishment the master decides to inflict, whether deserved or not,” which reportedly included beatings, beatings and electric shocks.
The alleged contract cited Lanng's “responsibility” not to kill or cause permanent bodily harm to Doe while administering the punishments.
“The slave agrees to always suffer her punishments without being angry, sullen or frustrated with her master and to thank him afterwards,” the document is said to have ordered.
Doe also claims she was “beaten to a bloody pulp” and assaulted with “inanimate objects.”
It was further said that Lanng forced Doe to keep a “diary” of “his subjugation and enslavement of her,” and that he would “beat Jane Doe with a stick” if she failed to make “submissive entries in the diary to write'.
When Lanng was fired, he denied the allegations of sexual conduct, telling TechCrunch, “No HR case, complaint or formal allegation was ever filed against me at Tradeshift.”
However, Doe claims she informed the company's human resources department and warned officials of her “suffering at the hands of the CEO under the slave contract,” according to the lawsuit.
The filing alleged that Doe signed the “slave contract” because she “loved her job, was doing important work in her new role, and did not want to lose the opportunity to work at Tradeshift.”
However, she claims the company retaliated against filing a complaint by firing her in 2020. It is unclear how long she worked at the company.
Doe claims she tried to cancel the contract several times over the years, “but whenever she did, Lanng would become irate and even violent.”
Doe also claims in her lawsuit that she has contact with “other victims… associated with Lanng, under the auspices of Tradeshift.”
Lanng's alleged year-long ordeal left Doe bedridden and in a precarious psychological state for nearly two years, and she still suffers from PTSD.
The lawsuit claims she has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical and therapeutic care and now “bears countless scars and physical damage, remnants of the actual, physical sexual torture she suffered at Lanng's hands while still employed at Tradeshift.”
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Lanng pushed back on the claims against him, saying they were levied to extort “financial gain” from him.
“As co-founder and CEO of Tradeshift for over a decade, I want to be very clear: Tradeshift has never condoned or concealed sexual harassment claims.
“The claims in this lawsuit are defamatory and do not reflect my prior relationship with the plaintiff.
“The shocking and vile allegations in the lawsuit are categorically false, and I reject allegations that I subjected anyone to any form of abuse during my tenure as CEO or at any other time in my life.
“The only details of the lascivious complaint against me that are true are that the plaintiff and I had a sexual relationship and that she once worked at Tradeshift. This relationship, which predated her employment at Tradeshift, ended eight months after she joined the company.
Lanng has hit back at the recent claims, saying he is being 'shamed' about his private life in a malicious campaign for 'personal financial gain'
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Lanng pushed back on the claims against him, saying they were levied to extort “financial gain” from him.
The statement continued: “In 2014, I made the grave error of judgment by hiring someone I was dating and with whom I had a consensual sexual relationship.
'While this did not violate Tradeshift HR policies, it was irresponsible to hire someone I was in a relationship with. I regret the decision. It was a foolish mistake that I will not repeat.
“The plaintiff continued to work for Tradeshift for approximately five years after our relationship ended, rising through the ranks, out of my sight, through a series of promotions as Tradeshift grew from a dozen employees to more than 1,000 in multiple cities around the world .
'Her position was eliminated in one of the many layoffs that Tradeshift has unfortunately had to undergo.
'Words cannot adequately express how disheartening it is that a highly distorted version of the extremely intimate details of a private consensual sexual relationship is now not only in the public domain, but is also being used to defame me for personal financial gain .
“This is a cynical and insensitive insult to the victims of sexual violence and human trafficking.”