Mr. Liu only got more famous in 2015, when he married a 21-year-old student and internet celebrity named Zhang Zetian. By the summer of 2018, when he traveled to Minnesota, he was worth an estimated $7.5 billion.

27 toasts of wine

Ms. Liu grew up in Beijing, introverted and intense, the only child of an affluent family. Her father was a businessman, and her mother, Ms. Liu said, was strict and quick to scold or punish her physically. She only allowed Ms. Liu to wear her hair short. Today, Ms. Liu’s waist-length cut is an act of rebellion.

In 2016, she went to a liberal arts college in Minnesota to study literature, while also practicing piano two and half hours a day. She dreamed of becoming a diplomat or a professor of linguistics, but she was also interested in business. She transferred to the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management in August 2018, where a professor recruited her to volunteer with a program for visiting international executives. One of them was Mr. Liu.

Every morning, Ms. Liu got up early and took the executive visitors jogging. On the fifth day, she was invited to a group dinner at a Japanese restaurant. When Ms. Liu arrived, she found that she was the only volunteer — and the only woman — at a table of about a dozen middle-aged Chinese men. Surveillance video shows that one of the men directed her to sit next to Mr. Liu, the most accomplished and wealthiest member of the group. At Chinese business dinners, it is common for pretty young women to be placed next to powerful men to laugh at their lewd jokes.

In the next two hours, according to the police, members of the party raised their glasses of red wine in at least 27 toasts. Ms. Liu drank 19 times. The man sitting across from her passed out on the table and had to be carried away.

After dinner, Ms. Liu left in a limousine with Mr. Liu and two of his female assistants. They drove to a house rented by one of the executives, but Ms. Liu didn’t want to go in. The chauffeur, whose name is redacted in police reports, later told officers that he saw Ms. Liu and Mr. Liu talking in front of his car. “Then he grabbed her arm, kind of overpower her and bring her to my car in the back,” the chauffeur said, according to a transcript. “I look in my mirror and this guy was all over this girl.” Then, he said, one of Mr. Liu’s assistants pushed the mirror up to obscure the chauffeur’s view. The chauffeur told the police that he didn’t hear anyone saying “stop” or “no," or cry for help.

Mr. Liu went with Ms. Liu to her apartment. A few hours later, a friend of hers reported to the police that Ms. Liu had told him, via a messaging app, that she had been raped.