Airbnb ‘paid off ’ rape victim to protect image

Airbnb employs a ‘‘safety team’’ of 100 agents around the world who respond to crimes committed in properties listed on its website.

The rental company also arranges payments to victims in an effort to safeguard public trust, it has emerged.

In one case Airbnb paid US$7 million (NZ$10 million) to a woman who was allegedly raped in a Manhattan flat. The safety team arranged for flights and hotel accommodation, as well as investigating the incident, Bloomberg reported.

Team members, including former emergency service workers and military veterans, can pay for flights, accommodation, counselling and healthcare costs in response to the most serious incidents in a strategy known as ‘‘shooting the money cannon’’, according to the agency, which cited accounts from former team members.

Some were said to have dealt with victims who were hiding or fleeing from an assault, or to have hired cleanup crews to remove blood from carpets or patch bullet holes in walls.

Nick Shapiro, a former deputy chief of staff at the CIA and a National Security Council adviser in the Obama administration, who was Airbnb’s head of crisis management from December 2015 to September 2019, said he led the team’s response to the alleged rape. The incident, which occurred weeks after he took over as Airbnb’s global head of crisis management, ‘‘brought me back to feelings of confronting truly horrific matters at Langley [CIA headquarters] and in the situation room of the White House,’’ he told Bloomberg.

The victim, who was 29, was one of a group of friends said to have picked up the keys to the flat, as arranged, from a nearby shop. Returning to the flat alone early on New Year’s Day, she was allegedly attacked by a man hiding in the bathroom. Police were said to have caught a suspect that morning and found him with a knife, one of her earrings and a set of keys to the flat. Junior Lee, 24, was arrested for sexual assault and other charges, according to court records. He has pleaded not guilty and is due back in court next month.

Airbnb flew the alleged victim’s mother to New York, arranged for them to fly back to Australia and paid the woman US$7m in exchange for an agreement not to talk about the settlement or ‘‘imply responsibility or liability’’.

The case had not been previously reported. A spokesman for the company said he could not comment on it.