A horny ex-honcho for a Chinese broadcast company — whose alleged pervy ways spurred Mayor de Blasio to pass a bill protecting interns from harassment — was slapped with a new, sex-tainted lawsuit Wednesday.
The three female plaintiffs are accusing Zhengzhu Liu, then a supervisor for Phoenix Satellite TV, with luring them to swanky Midtown hotel rooms under the guise that he wanted to discuss work — only to grope them against their wishes.
Heidl Chang and Bingying Liu of Queens, who both work at the New York bureau for Phoenix, and Chinese national Anne Shih, who interviewed for a bureau job in 2011, filed the scathing suit against Liu and Phoenix in Manhattan Federal Court. Bingying is not related to the defendant.
Zhengzhu Liu was fired in 2012 after Phoenix investigated a slew of sexual-harassment allegations against him by staffers and interns.
Phoenix and Zhengzhu Liu were slapped with a similar suit last year by a former intern. She said Liu lured her to a room at the Hilton in Midtown to discuss potential employment, only to try kissing her “by force” and squeezing her butt.
But Manhattan federal Judge Kevin Castel determined that the plaintiff, Lihuan Wang, couldn’t continue with her sexual-harassment claim because unpaid interns aren’t employees — so they’re not covered by the city’s Human Rights Law.
As a result, the Council Council earlier this year passed a bill amending the law to protect interns, and de Blasio signed the legislation into law Tuesday.
According to Bingying Liu, a reporter, she bluntly told Zhengzhu Liu that she was happily married during a 2011 encounter at a Double Tree hotel — only to have him draw on his inner Bill Clinton.
“He told Ms. Liu that Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath, not because of his sexual affair,” the suit says. “He said that Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton a blow job, and that a blow job is not sexual intercourse.
“He then said that having a sexual affair and receiving a blow job were ‘not a big deal.’ ”
The suit claims the reporter “remained silent to demonstrate” the comments were unwelcome and that shortly after, he threatened to fire her.
The suit also claims that Shih was interviewed for the same reporting job but turned it down after being turned off by his unwelcome sexual advances.
A Phoenix lawyer declined to comment.