SF tech CEO made assistant sign sexual ‘slave contract’ and abused her for years, lawsuit alleges

A former employee at prominent San Francisco tech startup Tradeshift has filed a lawsuit against the company, its former CEO and several board members and investors, alleging that she was subject to a “sexual slave contract.”

The suit, filed Thursday under “Jane Doe” in San Francisco, alleges that Christian Lanng, the former CEO and Tradeshift co-founder, sexually abused the plaintiff, his executive assistant, and trafficked her around the world. Though the supply chain software startup fired Lanng from his CEO job in September, citing “serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment,” the lawsuit alleges board members and investors knew about the allegations since 2019.

In a statement to SFGATE sent by spokesperson Debora Lima, Lanng said he had hired Doe in 2014 when they were already dating. He claimed the relationship ended eight months later, and said the lawsuit’s claims are “categorically false” and “defamatory and not reflective of my past relationship with the plaintiff.”

“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 also being used to defame me for personal financial gain,” Lanng wrote.

Bryan Freedman, the plaintiff’s lawyer, denied Doe and Lanng ever dated.

In her suit, the plaintiff said she feared retribution at work if she didn’t sign the “slave contract” when Lanng sent it to her two months into the job. It alleges that “years of sexual abuse, torture and assault” followed, including sexual assault by members of Tradeshift’s board. 

The suit further alleges Doe “was trafficked to Switzerland, the Philippines, India, Japan, and in San Francisco, where Lanng eventually rented Jane Doe an apartment not far from Tradeshift’s headquarters, so he could sexually assault and violate her on a routine, even daily, basis.” 

“Tradeshift was a toxic, hostile work environment in which Jane Doe was sexually abused, tortured and assaulted by Lanng, as well as sexually assaulted by two board members, [Morten] Lund and [Morten] Sondergaard, all during the course and scope of her employment, with knowledge of its C-Suite and Board,” the suit reads.

The filing also contains the alleged “slave contract” document, which lists various sexual requirements for the signee and the ways she was to behave in private. One section titled “At work” reads, “the slave will have freedom to use her own name and act independently as long as she remembers she is her Masters property and she is there to please him and for no other reason.”

Multiple times, the lawsuit said, she tried to break out of the “‘master-slave’ arrangement” but Lanng would “become enraged.” The abuse continued when she was promoted from executive assistant to a job in international outreach, she alleges.

The plaintiff reported Lanng’s behavior to Tradeshift’s human resources department, the lawsuit said, but Lanng stayed on as CEO of the startup. Tradeshift fired the plaintiff in May 2020, according to the lawsuit — the filing contains a screenshot of an email from the company’s HR chief that June, telling the plaintiff that her firing was due to a company restructuring.

Reached by SFGATE, Tradeshift spokesperson Harry Ronaldson wrote, “Tradeshift denies the allegations in the claim insofar as they are made against the company,” and pointed to the company’s October announcement that it was firing Lanng. Lund and Sondergaard could not be reached for comment.

The company, per Crunchbase, has raised $1.1 billion since its founding and $470 million since the start of 2021.

Hear of anything happening at Tradeshift or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.