When Wall Street CEO Benjamin Wey found a half-dressed romantic rival under the sheets of his sexy Swedish intern’s bed, he flew into a jealous rage and shouted a question: “Did you f–k her?”
Nightclub promoter James Chauvet told rapt Manhattan federal court jurors Wednesday how a romantic night spent with Wey’s employee, 25-year-old Hanna Bouveng, ended with the financier storming into the woman’s apartment and threatening to call the police.
“Do you know who Benjamin Wey is?” Bouveng’s attorney, David Ratner, asked Chauvet.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he replied.
Then Chauvet recounted how he had stayed overnight with the pretty brunette at her luxury Financial District apartment in April 2014, with her leaving in the morning to go to work, leaving him alone in her bed.
“After Hanna left, I was awake and . . . I heard the doorbell ring or a knock on the door. I looked through the peephole. I see Mr. Wey. Then he starts saying, ‘Hanna, Hanna.’ And he is knocking again,” said Chauvet, 31, who met Bouveng at the Chelsea nightclub Avenue.
Chauvet retreated to the bedroom, figuring Wey would just go away. He had no such luck, as Wey had a key to the unit for which he was paying most of Bouveng’s rent.
“I . . . just laid down under the sheets. I hear the door click. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening right now,’ ” Chauvet said. “He goes into the apartment, ‘Hanna, Hanna.’ ”
Chauvet said the married Wey soon made his way to the bedroom and went ballistic when he saw another man there.
“He starts freaking out. He is like, ‘What are you doing here? Who are you?’ ” Chauvet testified, as the four-man, four-woman jury listened intently. “I said, ‘I’m Hanna’s friend.’ He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I was just hanging out with Hanna.’ ”
“Then he asked me, excuse my language: ‘Did you f–k her?’ ” Chauvet told the court.
“And I was just like, I literally had the sheets like this,” Chauvet said, holding his hands right up under his chin in a pantomime of his position in bed.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I think it’s very extreme for you to ask me that.’
“Then he was like, ‘What is your name? What is your name?’ He took a piece of paper . . . He wrote my name down. I gave it to him. I gave him my phone number, even,” Chauvet said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“He said, ‘You can’t be here. I am going to call the cops if you don’t leave.’ I said, ‘I will leave.’ But I had on shorts. I wasn’t naked, but I did have the sheets over me and I said, ‘I am not going to get dressed in front of you,’ ” Chauvet testified.
“He said, ‘I am going to call the cops and when I come back, you better be gone.’ Then he leaves. I get dressed immediately and I leave.”
The lurid bedroom details came as part of an $850 million lawsuit filed against the 43-year-old Wey by Bouveng, who claims the money man pressured her into sex and then retaliated when she cut him off.
When Chauvet was cross-examined by attorney Gary Meyerhoff about whether Wey had reprimanded Bouveng for partying too much, Chauvet erupted in an emotional defense of his now-ex-girlfriend.
“It was never about her work performance. It was about him consistently going after her and then telling her if she doesn’t give tangible love, he would . . .,” Chauvet started to reply before he was cut off by Manhattan federal Judge Paul Gardephe.
Outside court, Chauvet answered, “Absolutely” when asked if he thought Wey was jealous of his relationship with Bouveng.
“He’s obsessed. He thinks, ‘How could a guy like me [Chauvet] have a girl like that when he has all the money?’ ”
Wey was so enraged at finding Chauvet in Bouveng’s bed — the same bed in which she accuses Wey of forcing her into sex four times — that he kicked her out of the apartment, fired her and even emailed her dad.
“I saw a 6-foot-tall homeless black man named James lying on her bed. The man was totally naked, dirty, totally drunk and perhaps on illegal drugs,” Wey wrote to Bouveng’s father, Nils Sundqvist, in one email entered into evidence.
Wey continued his attacks against Chauvet on the website TheBlot.com, calling him a pimp and a cocaine criminal and exaggerating Chauvet’s two misdemeanor convictions, for gun and drug possession.
Bouveng testified Wednesday that the US citizenship documents she had stored in her apartment disappeared when Wey kicked her out after confronting Chauvet.
The Swede said she went to the apartment of a friend, Chemme Kolumon, when Wey, the CEO of New York Global Group, booted her.
“When I got to Chemme’s apartment, I [discovered] all the papers were gone,” Bouveng testified.
“After they were disappeared and Mr. Wey started to harass and stalk me and my family and friends, I don’t want to be in the US right now because I don’t know what he’s going to do and I feel safer in Sweden,” Bouveng said.
Wey has denied having sex with Bouveng, and his lawyers call her lawsuit “extortion.”