Anonymous08/13/2022
Forbes.com.br
[Translation]
From heiress to criminal: How Clare Bronfman financed a cult
Heiress spent nearly $150 million on the group NXIVM, whose members have been charged with sex trafficking, fraud, and extortion
Will Yakowicz, August 13, 2022
It was 4 p.m. on Good Friday 2019 and Clare Bronfman stood before a judge in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn already knowing her fate.
She had cut a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to criminal charges related to her role as an executive board member of the NXIVM group, a cult that federal prosecutors describe as a deeply manipulative pyramid scheme that forced slavery-like conditions on some members. Others were allegedly coerced into having sex with NXIVM founder Keith Raniere.
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But Bronfman, who turned 40 a few days earlier, often looked perplexed during the hearings, wearing a white and blue scarf as she cast glances at reporters and other onlookers who entered the courtroom. It is as if she asked herself the same question that most people who attended the trial asked themselves: how did an heiress to the multi-billion dollar fortune of the Canadian Seagram group become the centerpiece of a group that became known as a sex cult?
Bronfman, who declined to speak to Forbes, agreed to pay $6 million to the U.S. federal government and plead guilty to criminal charges of harboring an illegal alien and defrauding the identity of a deceased person. Had she gone to trial, she could have been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Many observers saw the deal as a good deal, considering that she has invested approximately $150 million in NXIVM since 2002. In 2020, she was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison.
As she addressed the judge, her voice, modulated by a typical British accent, was almost inaudible. The gallery of journalists leaned in, lifting their ears to listen.
“Your Honor, I have received a great gift from my grandfather and my father,” Bronfman said. “With the gift comes an immense privilege and, more importantly, a tremendous responsibility. It doesn't come the ability to break the law; it comes with a greater responsibility to uphold the law. I have failed to uphold the laws set forth by this country and for that I am truly sorry.”
But it was this “great gift,” their enormous wealth, that made the Bronfman sisters irresistible targets for the group's rising guru, Keith Raniere, who has been tried on seven criminal charges that include conspiracy to extort, sex trafficking, and conspiracy to commit forced labor.
Raniere, who was contacted through his lawyer, did not respond to our questions. The guru was sentenced on June 19, 2019. The sum of the sentences, handed down in September 2020, is 120 years in prison.
The Billionaire's Daughters
Clare and Sara are the two youngest daughters of the late billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr. who retired from his positions as president and CEO of the Seagram Company in 1994. Edgar Sr. died in 2013 and had five children, including Edgar Bronfman Jr. from his first marriage, who took over his father's company.
After Edgar Sr. and his third wife, Rita “Georgiana” Webb divorced (for the second time) in the 1990s, the girls spent their childhood in England studying in boarding schools and visiting their mother, who lived in Kenya, during vacations.
When Clare was a sophomore in high school, she moved to boarding school in Connecticut, but dropped out the following year to live with her father in Virginia. She never finished high school, but became a talented rider.
In 2002, Sara, who was not charged with involvement in the crimes allegedly committed by NXIVM members, began taking classes at the headquarters of a self-improvement group near Albany, New York.
Founded by Raniere and a nurse named Nancy Salzman in 1998, the center offered coaching classes mixed with some neurolinguistic programming and group therapy techniques. Beginners usually took a five-day intensive course.
The students called Raniere “Vanguard” or “Grandmaster” and referred to Salzman as “Prefect.” NXIVM made bold claims about his practices. Raniere said that his “technology,” which he trademarked as “Rational Investigation Method,” was able to decrease symptoms of Tourette's syndrome, teach children to speak up to 13 languages, and help college students increase their “moral decision-making capacity.”
The group began to attract the attention of influential people. Among the 17,000 students who have attended NXIVM classes or workshops are Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television; Antonia Novello, former U.S. Surgeon General; and Stephen Cooper, now CEO of Warner Music Group. (Sara and Clare also organized a NXIVM event on an island owned by billionaire Richard Branson, who is a friend of the two.)
Sara convinced Clare, who was 23 and competing in equestrian competitions, to join the group, and soon they were paying Salzman for coaching services. Clare bought a house near the NXIVM headquarters in Clifton Park, New York State, and a horse farm in the area so that she could continue training.
In between lessons, she competed in tournaments. Eventually, Clare abandoned her sponsor, a German clothing company, and opted to wear a purple and black jacket emblazoned with “NXIVM.” As she began to win tournaments, rumors that she was part of an odd group in Albany began to spread in the riding community.
It was then that Raniere began to take an interest in Clare, say former cult members. With no riding experience, he began training her to be on the U.S. Olympic team. “They encouraged her to compete because Keith thought that if Clare made it to the Olympics he would become known as a great trainer around the world, gain fame, and be exposed to the Olympic world,” says Barbara Bouchey, who was one of the leaders of NXIVM and Raniere's girlfriend before she left the group in 2009. Bouchey says he remembers watching Clare compete with Salzman and Raniere. After making the U.S. team but failing to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, Clare eventually gave up the sport.
In early 2003, her daughters' new obsession caught the attention of Edgar Bronfman Sr. who enrolled in a five-day intensive course at NXIVM. “One of the reasons he took the workshop was because he saw the two of them evolve and grow over the course of a few months,” says Bouchey. “He was intrigued.” Before long, he also became a supporter, and offered a statement that referred to Salzman as “one of the most influential women in my life.”
Edgar Bronfman Sr's enthusiasm didn't last long. He became suspicious after he discovered that Clare had lent $2 million to Raniere and Salzman. He stopped attending classes. “He was afraid that Keith and Nancy would clean out his daughters' money,” says Bouchey.
Then, in 2003, when Forbes published a critical report on Raniere and the group, explaining that while the group seemed to exploit the “high-profit fad of executive coaching,” critics saw a “darker, more manipulative side” of Raniere. And the cover story included a heavy-handed accusation from Edgar Sr.: “I think it's a cult.”
The article had immediate repercussions. Raniere, according to Bouchey, blamed Clare for the report, saying that she should never have told her father about the loan. Raniere became convinced that Mr. Bronfman had hired a “double agent” to infiltrate NXIVM and gather information that could hurt the group, Bouchey says,
From that point on, Raniere would claim that Clare had committed an “ethical violation” – a cardinal sin in the world of NXIVM, explains another former member. The scathing criticism from her father and the unwanted attention the article attracted would be used against her in the years to come, former members say.
In a January 6, 2011 email exchange that was introduced as evidence at Raniere's trial, Edgar Sr. tried to explain to his daughter that he was not funding the group's haters.
“Whether you believe me or not, I am not lying and I love you both very much,” Edgar Sr. wrote to Clare. “Someone is not telling you the truth. Why don't you try to find out who that might be? Who has something to gain? Certainly not me. What would my motivation be?”
He signs off, “Tons of love, even if unrequited, Daddy.” The relationship between Clare and her father would be strained until his death in 2013.
“Purifying” Seagram's legacy
According to Steve Pigeon – who along with noted consultant Roger Stone, worked for NXIVM as a political consultant – Raniere had convinced Clare that her family's money was bad and that she had to purify it by spending it on ethical things, like NXIVM.
Samuel Bronfman, Clare's grandfather, made his family's fortune thanks to the US Prohibition, he recalled. The Canadian whiskey distiller settled on the US-Canadian border and made millions when US distilleries began to fail.
Both sisters, according to former members, saw their financial support for NXIVM as a way to clean up their fortunes and leave their own philanthropic legacy. “The girls took on a role feeling that they could make a difference in the world, and it became a very important career for them,” says Bouchey.
Over time, it was Clare who became most deeply involved with the organization. In documents filed with the court, prosecutors say that Clare supported Raniere financially over the years, “providing him with millions of dollars and paying for travel on private planes that cost approximately $65,000.00 per flight.”
A large portion of the money – estimated at about $50 million, says Peter Skolnik, a lawyer who fought NXIVM for years – was also used to sue the cult's enemies, both real ones and those who were viewed that way by Raniere.
After she stopped competing in horse racing, Clare wrote (on her defunct website) that her role in NXIVM was focused on “areas of law” and “corporate ethics.” Over 15 years, it is estimated that she hired 50 to 60 lawyers from 30 different firms to sue nearly a dozen critics of NXIVM, Skolnik says.
Clare also funded two frivolous cases against AT&T and Microsoft, alleging that the companies infringed Raniere's intellectual property. (He lost and was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the companies' legal fees.)
“NXIVM was a litigation machine,” says Rick Ross, the well-known cult expert who defended himself in an epic lawsuit filed by the group that lasted 14 years. “Clare's bank account was being sucked dry by lawyers and lawsuits. If you put in a list all the times they hired a lawyer to defend them or sue someone, $50 million doesn't seem like such an exorbitant amount.”
At least three people who defended themselves against NXIVM's aggressive legal strategy – former member Bouchey, former consultant Joseph O'Hara, and another of Raniere's ex-girlfriends, Toni Natalie – ended up filing for personal bankruptcy protection, according to public court documents.
NXIVM also unsuccessfully sued journalists who exposed Raniere's secrets. One of the targets was James Odato, an investigative journalist for New York's Times Union who did revealing coverage; as did Suzanna Andrews of Vanity Fair for a lengthy report published in 2010; and others.
Clare Bronfman's generosity also protected Raniere from his bad investment decisions. Between 2005 and 2007, the supposed guru, who liked to brag about having one of the highest IQs in the world, lost nearly $70 million on a bet on the corn commodities market. According to Pigeon, who was working for Clare and NXIVM at the time, Raniere claimed that the commodities market was controlled by the Illuminati, who were led by Edgar Bronfman Sr.
Clare and Sara covered about $65 million that Raniere had lost, says Pigeon.
In 2007, the Bronfman sisters spent more than $26 million on a real estate project designed by Raniere to build and sell expensive homes in prime neighborhoods like Sherman Oaks and the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, California.
In 2007, the Bronfman sisters spent over $26 million on a Los Angeles real estate project cooked up by Raniere to build and sell expensive homes in posh neighborhoods like Sherman Oaks and Hollywood Hills.
“In the end, I realized that Keith was in control,” says Pigeon, who worked for NXIVM from 2003 to 2011. “She [Clare] was his devotee and gave Keith everything he needed.”
Scars, sexual abuse, and private imprisonment
In addition to funding projects, the Bronfmans' wealth and social status played a crucial role in building Nxivm's credibility. The sisters even spent $2 million to persuade the Dalai Lama to visit Albany in 2009 and meet Raniere in person.
For years, this strategy worked. But the local press began publishing several reports critical of NXIVM, and the negative coverage turned into a storm that could not be ignored in October 2017, when the New York Times published an article detailing the alleged horrors of a small, elite inner circle within NXIVM called DOS, an acronym for “dominus obsequious sororium,” or imperfect Latin for “master over submissive women.”
Described as a female empowerment group within NXIVM, the DOS allegedly required its recruits, called “slaves,” to provide nude photos to their “masters” and other potentially damaging information as collateral, according to information in a New York Times report that was also used by federal prosecutors and corroborated by witnesses at hearings.
Some women in DOS were branded with Raniere's initials using a cauterizing pen. Allison Mack, the actress from the TV series “Smallville” and a longtime member of NXIVM and DOS, would later tell the New York Times Magazine that burning the letters on the women's bodies had been her idea.
Some of the “slaves” were often forced to have sex with Raniere to show their commitment to the group. They were expected to follow their “master's” orders and recruit other women, prosecutors said.
The “slaves” were required to follow strict diets and instructed to keep their pubic hair long to suit Vanguard's personal taste. The New York Times described an “initial marking ceremony” in which six members were asked to undress and lie on a massage table while chanting “Master, please mark me, it would be an honor” and being forcibly held down by the other women.
In response to the newspaper reports, Raniere issued a statement to NXIVM members in which he denied his involvement with DOS and claimed that he had hired investigators to ensure that group members were not being abused or coerced.
In the court cases, prosecutors claim that various forms of abuse took place within the DOS. Mack, who pleaded guilty to several extortion charges in March 2019, admitted to recruiting women to become “slaves” and collecting their “collateral,” which included explicit photos of themselves and videotaped confessions of various crimes.
In their case against Raniere, prosecutors allege that he sexually assaulted two underage girls and committed what appear to be acts of severe psychological torture, including allegedly telling one woman that she should remain in his room – where she stayed for nearly two years – to remedy an “ethical violation” she had committed.
Raniere denied the abuse charges and claimed that all of his relationships with DOS members were consensual.
Prosecutors did not charge Clare with being a DOS member or committing sex trafficking. Clare was initially indicted on charges of extortion, identity theft and money laundering. She was to be tried along with Raniere and the other co-defendants, including Mack, Nancy Salzman and her daughter Lauren, and longtime NXIVM accountant Kathy Russell. But all the women have cut deals with the prosecution in which they pleaded guilty to some charges in exchange for lighter sentences.
Documents presented to the US courts suggest that prosecutors were prepared to present evidence that Clare was in a sexual relationship with Raniere and that she helped facilitate his access to the women.
On the first day of Raniere's trial, a woman identified only as a former DOS member named “Sylvie” gave testimony. She described how Clare hired her, at the age of 18, to help maintain his stables and took her to NXIVM, paying for her classes. She stated that she was later recruited as a DOS “slave” by another member of the group, Monica, who instructed her to meet Raniere and do whatever he asked. When Sylvie met Raniere, he told her to lie on a bed and performed oral sex on her, Sylvie claimed.
Clare Bronfman's final battle
After the New York Times article was published in 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began interviewing victims and witnesses, and Raniere soon fled to Mexico. He stopped using his phone and communicated only through encrypted emails, according to prosecutors.
In February 2018, an arrest warrant was issued in the U.S. A month later, federal police in Mexico found Raniere hiding inside a closet at a luxury resort outside Puerto Vallarta with several women, including Mack.
Even as authorities began to close in, Clare Bronfman remained loyal. On December 14, 2017, Clare posted a statement on her website: “Some have asked me why I remain a member and why I still support NXIVM and Keith Raniere. The answer is simple: I have seen so much good come from our programs and from Keith himself.”
“It would be a tragedy to lose the innovative and transformative ideas and tools that continue to improve the lives of so many people,” he said.
In the following months, Mack, the Salzmans, Russell and Clare Bronfman were indicted and arrested. Clare was released on $100 million bail, of which $25 million was paid in cash from one of her trust funds and another $25 million in real estate pledged as collateral, including the island she owns in Fiji.
Clare's loyalty to Raniere and the group seemed unwavering after her arrest. According to public records, Clare established an irrevocable trust to pay the legal fees of Raniere and the other co-defendants.
But little by little the facade of a united family began to crack. In March 2019, with pressure mounting around the next hearing, Nancy Salzman pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy.
The reality and weight of the charges seemed to wear Clare down. During a hearing on March 27, Judge Nicholas Garaufis asked Clare if she had consulted the famous – and suddenly notorious – attorney Michael Avenatti. She had. Just a few days before the hearing, Avenatti had been indicted on charges that he tried to extort $20 million from Nike.
The judge also asked Clare if she had read reports that indicated that Mark Geragos, the heiress' lead attorney, was Avenatti's unidentified co-conspirator. According to reports, Clare's face turned pale and she fainted. The judge eventually adjourned the hearing and rescheduled the proceedings.
The next day, Judge Garaufis asked if Clare was fully recovered. “I am. Thank you,” she said. “Honestly, I was really scared yesterday.” Days later, she agreed to cut a deal with the prosecution.
https://forbes.com.br/forbes-money/2022/08/de-herdeira-a-criminosa-como-clare-bronfman-financiou-uma-seita/
