Lawyer for JD.com founder Richard Liu says surveillance clips provide different account
- Two edited videos of Liu and his accuser were posted on Monday to a Chinese social media site
A lawyer for JD.com founder Richard Liu Qiangdong said on Monday that surveillance video showing the Chinese businessman in a lift and walking arm-in-arm with a woman who has accused him of rape provides a different account of what happened that night.
Two edited videos of Liu and his accuser were posted on Monday to a Chinese social media site. The law firm representing the accuser said the videos are consistent with what she told law enforcement and alleged in a lawsuit filed last week against the businessman and his company.
Liu, founder of the Beijing-based e-commerce company JD.com, was arrested on August 31 in Minneapolis on suspicion of felony rape, but prosecutors announced in December that he would face no criminal charges because the case had “profound evidentiary problems” and it was unlikely they could prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The woman, Jingyao Liu, a Chinese college student at the University of Minnesota, alleges in her lawsuit that she was groped in Richard Liu’s limousine and raped in her flat after a dinner at Origami, a Japanese restaurant in Minneapolis, where she says she felt pressured to drink, as the JD.com founder and other executives toasted her. At one point, Richard Liu said she would dishonour him if she did not join in, the lawsuit says.
Richard Liu and Jingyao Liu are not related.
It is not clear who posted the videos, which were posted on Weibo under an account called Mingzhou Events. The clips are short and the content is edited, but Richard Liu’s lawyers in China confirmed their authenticity. The videos do not contain audio, and they do not show what happened in his limousine or in the woman’s flat.