JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) offered former senior vice president Chirayu Rana $1 million to settle his sexual assault and harassment claims weeks before his lawsuit went viral.
Rana’s suit, filed in New York state court last week and refiled Monday, alleges that a senior female colleague at the bank, named as Lorna Hajdini, repeatedly sexually assaulted him and used racial slurs tied to his Nepalese background.
JPMorgan and Hajdini both deny the allegations.
Rana rejected the March offer of $1 million and countered in April with $11.75 million, according to the WSJ.
The refiled complaint added two witness affidavits, a PTSD diagnosis and an allegation that Hajdini proposed a threesome.
The Counter Was $11.75 Million
The $1 million figure was less than two years of Rana’s pay at JPMorgan, where he worked as a senior vice president on the leveraged finance team. He has been out of work since being let go from private equity firm Bregal Sagemount in early April.
A JPMorgan spokesman told the Journal the bank tried to reach a deal to protect the employee from the reputational damage now playing out, while maintaining that the allegations have no merit.
The accused colleague, named in the suit as Lorna Hajdini and still employed at JPMorgan as an executive director, denies the allegations through her lawyers, who say there was no romantic or sexual relationship between the two.
Credibility Questions Mount
The Manhattan District Attorney has declined to pursue criminal charges, according to multiple reports.
The New York Post reported Rana told supervisors his father had died in December 2024 to obtain extended bereavement leave, citing sources who say the death was fabricated.
Screenshots circulated this week of a legal chatbot transcript from July 2024, in which Rana described nearly identical allegations but attributed them to a male boss at Morgan Stanley, a former employer not involved in the current suit.
What Polymarket Is Pricing
Polymarket gives a 73% chance that Rana himself is sued by May 31, with traders wagering more than $242,000 on the contract.
The chance of him issuing a public apology this year sits at 4%, while a market on whether he gets divorced this year lies at 5%.
Prominent New York lawyer Jason Goldman called Rana’s suit “a shakedown letter,” and a JPMorgan source called it “a novel.”
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