What should a company do when faced with an accusation of sexual assault within its organization, even if it believes it has no basis? JP Morgan has been forced to answer this question; and its method involves paying the complainant in the hope of putting out the fire. Despite its attempts, the bank led by the influential Jamie Dimon did not achieve its goal of ending a controversy that has spread across social media.
The largest financial institution in the United States offered one million dollars (about 850,000 euros at the current exchange rate) to Chirayu Rana, a former investment banking employee, weeks before he filed a lawsuit against a colleague whom he accused of sexual assault, according to the newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
According to the lawsuit filed in a New York court, in addition to the sexual assault by an employee, the investment banking worker also suffered racial discrimination — Rana is of Nepalese origin — by several colleagues. JP Morgan, which claims to have initiated an internal investigation, states that the plaintiff’s accusations are unfounded. The accused’s lawyers, identified in the lawsuit as Lorna Hajdini, claim that everything is an invention by Rana.
The plaintiff’s lawyers filed a lawsuit last week in a New York state court signed with a pseudonym. Suspicions arose because it was withdrawn from the registry shortly after. This Monday, they refiled a very similar accusation document to the original, with some changes, which has given rise to some speculation.
The public lawsuit, reported by The Wall Street Journal, includes graphic details and statements that allegedly describe how the senior banker demanded sexual relations from her subordinate. The insinuations were accompanied, according to the document, by racist insults and threats. “If you don’t fuck me soon, I’m going to ruin you… Never forget, you’re mine,” she said, according to the lawsuit. “If you don’t fuck me until I’m breathless tonight, I’m going to sabotage your promotion,” the document adds.
The accusations went viral as fake videos generated by artificial intelligence depicting the alleged events described in the lawsuit spread on social media platforms like X and Instagram.
The one million dollar offer was intended to avoid all this controversy, but Rana rejected JP Morgan’s offer and demanded more money, according to sources cited by the Journal. “We tried to reach an agreement to avoid the time and money of a legal process and to support an employee who felt threatened by the reputational damage she is now experiencing. We continue to believe the accusations are unfounded. New information that has emerged in the process only reinforces that conclusion,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
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Rana started working at JP Morgan in May 2024. A year later, he filed an internal complaint with the company’s human resources department claiming to be a victim of discrimination, racial harassment, and sexual assault by several employees. Specifically, he claimed that colleagues had made derogatory comments related to his Nepalese origins and that he had been assaulted multiple times by a high-ranking employee in the company. Rana was granted paid leave after filing the complaint and the bank initiated an internal investigation, according to the lawsuit. Sources from the Wall Street Journal conclude that the plaintiff finally left the company in October 2025, at which point he began working with the venture capital firm Bregal Sagemount.
The new storm shaking the New York financial world shows, on one hand, the difficulties companies face in dealing with accusations that can ruin the reputation of those involved. And, on the other, how difficult it is for real victims of sexual assault to prove what happened to them.
Trump Lawsuit
The controversy is not new for JP Morgan, which in January faced a lawsuit from the U.S. president, Donald Trump, against Dimon, chairman and CEO. The president was claiming at least 5 billion dollars for the damage that, according to him, the bank caused by withdrawing its financial services for political reasons.
In February, a month after the Republican filed the lawsuit, JP Morgan admitted that it had deliberately closed Trump’s accounts, both personal and business, after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot by a mob instigated by him that tried to prevent the transfer of power to Democrat Joe Biden, who had won the 2020 elections.
In a response to Trump’s lawsuit, the largest financial institution in the United States said for the first time that it had canceled more than 50 bank accounts of the man who presided over the country between 2017 and 2021 and who returned to the White House after the 2024 elections.
