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The Information
Prosecutors in Canada will start laying out their case on Tuesday in a Toronto courtroom towards Peter Nygard, the founding father of a style empire, two years after he was charged with intercourse crimes by Canadian police.
Mr. Nygard, 82, has pleaded not responsible to 5 counts of sexual assault and one rely of forcible confinement involving 5 girls. The fees have been lowered, down to 6 counts from 11.
A jury on the Ontario Superior Courtroom of Justice in downtown Toronto will hear how the prosecutors consider that Mr. Nygard abused the ladies, whose identities are hidden by court-imposed publication bans to guard victims of sexual assault.
The time-frame of the accusations stretches from 1987 to 2005, the authorities have mentioned. Mr. Nygard was charged in Oct. 2021. Mr. Nygard has denied the allegations via his legal professionals’ statements to the media.
Mr. Nygard was as soon as one of the crucial notable names within the style world, who had luxurious houses, a non-public jet and hosted events after the Academy Award ceremony earlier than his enterprise and his popularity crumbled within the face of mounting accusations that he used his wealth and fame to abuse a number of girls.
The Background
The case in Toronto is the primary making an attempt Mr. Nygard on the numerous sexual assault accusations he faces.
In December 2020, federal prosecutors in Manhattan — the place Mr. Nygard’s firm had places of work and a retailer close to Occasions Sq. — charged him with intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and different crimes in america, Canada and the Bahamas.
The nine-count indictment accuses Mr. Nygard of wielding his firm’s affect and funds over 25 years to recruit “minor-aged feminine victims” and adults who have been typically assaulted or drugged by his associates “to make sure their compliance with Nygard’s sexual calls for.”
Mr. Nygard was arrested at his dwelling in Winnipeg, the capital of the province of Manitoba, the place he based Nygard Worldwide, his style firm, greater than 5 many years in the past. His arrest got here on the request of america below an extradition treaty.
A Canadian choose denied his bail in February 2021. 9 months later, he was charged by the Toronto police.
In March 2022, David Lametti, Canada’s justice minister on the time, ordered Mr. Nygard’s extradition, “however solely after present felony prices in Canada have been addressed,” he mentioned in a statement posted to X, the social media web site previously generally known as Twitter.
Mr. Nygard appealed his extradition order, citing poor well being. He has complained of weight reduction, fainting, and falling sick from jail meals.
In Winnipeg, the town’s police service filed felony prices of sexual assault and illegal confinement towards Mr. Nygard in July. It got here three years after they started investigating accusations that he sexually assaulted a 20-year-old girl in 1993 on the firm’s Winnipeg headquarters.
Mr. Nygard can also be scheduled to face trial in Montreal subsequent June on one rely of sexual assault and one rely of forcible confinement.
Why It Issues
Mr. Nygard used his firm’s assets, from its cash to its staff, to focus on victims who have been typically from deprived financial backgrounds or had a historical past of being abused, American prosecutors mentioned within the indictment in New York.
Earlier than the felony prices, Mr. Nygard additionally used his wealth and threats to squelch sexual abuse complaints leveled towards him in civil lawsuits spanning 4 many years, a Occasions investigation discovered.
The picture he cultivated as a jet-setting playboy millionaire who was typically within the firm of an entourage of ladies started to shatter within the wake of lawsuits filed by a neighbor within the Bahamas, Louis Bacon, a hedge fund billionaire who feuded with Mr. Nygard for about 20 years.
In a lawsuit, Mr. Bacon accused Mr. Nygard of raping teenage women within the Bahamas.
What started as a neighborhood squabble between rich males “escalated into an all-out effort by Nygard to destroy Bacon,” a New York State choose wrote in a Could defamation case ruling, awarding $203 million in damages to Mr. Bacon.
Mr. Nygard falsely claimed that Mr. Bacon had participated in insider buying and selling and was a member of a white supremacist group, amongst different accusations, and spent $15 million of his personal cash “to unfold the malicious falsehoods,” the choose wrote.
Mr. Nygard has appealed the choose’s ruling.
Susan Beachy contributed analysis. Mathew Silver contributed reporting from Toronto.
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