Front Burner - Canadian Peter Nygard, ‘pamper parties’ and rape allegations

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

Peter Nygard is a fashion mogul who made his fortune selling sensible clothing to middle-aged women. He was also known for throwing so-called “pamper parties” in the Bahamas and for a raging feud with a billionaire neighbour. Today, Fifth Estate co-host Bob McKeown and producer Timothy Sawa bring us their longtime investigation into Peter Nygard and report on the international rape lawsuit involving 46 women, including at least 17 Canadians. Nygard denies all allegations. None have been proven in court.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. New allegations of sexual assault today against Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygaard. Earlier this year, the FBI raided two of his offices in the United States,

and now he's facing class action lawsuit by more than 40 women who allege he sexually assaulted them. None of the allegations has yet been proven in court. It's a disturbing story. A flashy fashion mogul who made his fortune selling sensible clothing to middle-aged women. He was known for throwing these so-called pamper parties in the Bahamas and for a bitter, raging feud with a billionaire neighbor. Peter Nygaard is now accused of sexual assault and rape in an international lawsuit involving allegations from 46 women, including at least 17 Canadians. Allegations that he denies. Today, Fifth Estate co-host Bob McEwen and producer Timothy Sawa

bring us their longtime investigation. Before we begin, a warning that there are some very tough details in here. This is FrontBurner. Bob, Timothy, thank you so much for making the time to join me today. Hi, Tim. So, Bob, before we get into the allegations, for people who have never heard of Peter Nygaard. How would you describe him? Well, when Tim and I started this over a decade ago, about a dozen years ago now, it seemed really to be a great Canadian success story. Peter Nygaard had arrived in Canada with his family from Finland when he was nine in the early 50s. By 1980, he was one of the giants in the Canadian rag trade, in the fashion industry.

Eventually, his company, Nygaard International, would have hundreds of stores across Canada, employ thousands of people the world around, have revenues of a billion dollars. He was always on the list of richest Canadians. He was a brilliant businessman. There was a lot more to the story, as Tim and I were about to find out. Right. And I know that you have both been investigating Peter Nygaard for more than a decade. And during this time, I've heard that these very strange things started happening to you, things you haven't spoken publicly about before. So Timothy, can

you tell us more about that? For sure, Jamie. It was something that became clear quite early on in this process that this was not going to be like any other story we'd ever done. I remember Bob and I having a conversation saying, you know, we have to decide, do we really want to do this story? Because if we do, we're probably going to be talking about this 10 years from now. And here we are. So obviously we decided we'd keep going. I mean, the first signal that this was something different was we got sued twice, even during the research process. And so did some of the people who were talking to us got sued.

And then as the research was unfolding, which lasted over a year, there were strange things started to happen. I got this email from someone saying, who was connected to Peter Nygaard saying, please don't call me anymore. I don't want to talk to you. I want nothing to do with your vendetta against Peter Nygaard. And I'd never heard of this person. So I phoned him back and said, look, I've never called you. Why are you emailing me telling me not to call you? And he said, what email? And he never sent the email. So someone at some point had hacked into his email and sent it to me and started this exchange that wasn't real. And to this day, we don't really know who or how all this stuff was happening, but it was all happening while we were in the middle of this investigation. This is wild. Bob, what were you investigating for all those years ago? Back at the time, the title of our show was

Larger Than Life. And that was the way he led his life. And certainly that was the image he wanted to portray. One man, younger at heart than those half his age. That man is Peter Nygaard. And according to this video posted on YouTube, the 70-year-old fashion designer claims to have discovered the fountain of youth. Look at my before and after pictures. I come from anti-aging to reverse aging. He was effectively a billionaire. He had this massive property in the Bahamas, which was said to be one of the largest residential,

private residential properties in the world. It had 22 bedrooms. It had 38 bathrooms. And he had these parties on a regular basis in which he would invite the most beautiful women in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic and Jamaica and Cuba. He would have members of his staff go out and recruit them to come to these parties. So there was that side of it. Staff, go out and recruit them to come to these parties. So there was that side of it. But it was also a time when in public policy in Manitoba, where his company was founded, in Ontario, in Toronto, where it was headquartered, and in New York, where the world headquarters were, there were now laws being brought into place to do with workplace abuse and harassment and bullying.

with workplace abuse and harassment and bullying. And we had a couple of people from his human resources department come to us and say, we want to tell you about what's going on at Nygaard. So that was the beginning of it. It was really sort of a public policy story we thought we were doing. It became something much different. Timothy, Bob mentioned this property in the Bahamas. I know that you've been there to investigate it. Can you tell me a little bit more about what it's like? I mean, there's nothing

I've ever seen like it in my life. He actually describes it as the eighth wonder of the world. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is definitely unique. It is. So it's on the westernmost point of New Providence Island in the Bahamas. The location is as stunning as anything could ever be. There are hundreds of meters of beaches like you've never seen. The architecture is sort of styled after the Mayan style. There are Mayan temples. There are three story statues of giant eagles and lions. And there are these these sort of cabanas that jut out over the ocean made out of glass and stone. It is something pretty incredible. We filmed it from both a boat and from the air. So I've seen quite a bit of it. But what's also interesting, it's also the

location. It became sort of the lightning rod as his story began to unravel. this is where it all is sort of ground zero, where the allegations start, and where they've expanded out from. And I think this brings us to the lawsuit, right? Bob mentioned that you had investigated Peter Nygaard for other allegations before. But now there's this new lawsuit, 46 women have signed on to it. And what are these women alleging, Timothy? You're right, this is where it all kind of explodes. So this home in the Bahamas, he would have these pamper parties that Bob talked about. These were weekly parties he would have. And the allegations stem from those parties. He, oddly enough, was in the middle of an

environmental fight with the government of the Bahamas for illegally expanding his beaches. And out of that fight, these women started to come forward to the lawyers, we're told, to say, look, this is about way more than an environmental problem. There's some very serious things that have gone on. And that spiraled into this international class action lawsuit that's based in New York, where now a total of 46 women have come forward. It started with 10 women, mostly from the Bahamas, one woman from the U.S., and now we have a number of Canadians who signed on. Just last week, the lawsuit was expanded. There were at least 17 Canadians who signed on to this lawsuit as well,

and the details of what they went through are pretty horrific. Bob, can you tell me a little bit about what these women are alleging? Well, we've spoken to a number of them face to face. We have seen the videotaped statements they've made to the court for many more. Tim's read thousands of pages, literally, of court documents describing these allegations. Each of them may be different in a certain way, but there's a certain pattern to them as well. They all talk about usually being lured to Mr. Nygaard, often at his pamper parties, by a recruiter, somebody from his staff who goes out

to get women of a certain age and of a certain look. And there are recurring charges that they are drugged when they are there and made available to him for sexual purposes. They're told that they've been invited because they're attractive young women and Nygaard's looking for potential models. All of them allege that they were brought specifically to become a sexual object for the pleasure of Peter Nygaard. And, you know, if you're squeamish, put your hands over your ears for the next 15 seconds. It's vaginal rape. It's anal rape. It is oral rape. And in a number of cases, they describe Peter Nygaard requesting or demanding that they urinate or defecate in his mouth.

These are really difficult details for people to hear. Bob, how far back do these allegations of sexual assault go? We are now working, and I won't use names here, we're now working on stories about two women, Canadians, who have come forward to say they had these experiences, but who came forward decades ago. The most interesting case to me is one of a woman who came to work for Peter Nygaard in 1980. She was from a Western European country. She was a single mom. She was trying to build a new life. She came to Winnipeg because she knew people there. And she was a very talented fashion designer. She was hired by Nygaard. She was invited on a business trip to Asia, and she describes in detail how he raped her. She told people, she says, members, executives and friends at the time.

We have spoken to friends who heard the story. A number of years later, she gave an interview to a Winnipeg newspaper. Eventually, the story didn't get published. We will tell you why. Now, these are long before what is being alleged by some of the women who are coming forward now. And just to be clear, these allegations, you know, some of them didn't happen in the Bahamas, right? They happened in other places. You just mentioned Winnipeg, Toronto, Vancouver, a number of different Canadian cities where this is alleged to have happened. Okay. You know, I also just want to reiterate, Peter Nygaard has denied these allegations. There are no criminal charges. I know that you have reached out to Peter Nygaard's

lawyers here. They've responded to these allegations. They are essentially saying that they're lies. You know, Nygaard's lawyer vigorously denied the accusations as, quote, completely false and without foundation. Peter Nygaard looks forward to fully exposing this scam and once and for all clearing his name. And that comes from their lawyer, Jay Prober. The amended lawsuit is a work of fiction. The allegations or accusations of the women are fiction. It's really quite farcical. I think Mr. Prober also said that they were happy that the FBI had raided their offices and is investigating, so they'll get to the bottom of all this. You don't often hear that. Right, and this is what he was suing you for, including ongoing criminal libel charges, I understand.

Yeah, these are civil lawsuits for libel. So he's suing us for damages to his reputation. But for the past 10 years, effectively, he's also been behind a criminal prosecution of us. Now, Canada is one of the relatively few countries that has a criminal libel provision. So, you know, when you sue somebody civilly for libel, you're looking for money. When you take them to court under Section 300 of the criminal code in Canada, you're trying to put them in prison. And we have been in court with Mr. Nygaard. He's trying to put them in prison. And we have, we've been in court with Mr. Nygaard. He's, he's trying to get us convicted. And if he gets us convicted, we'll go to prison

for up to five years. So this is a journalistic story for us, but it's also a legal story. What's, what's also interesting is what's the foundation for that criminal case, because he, he actually hired a Scotland Guard former investigator to undertake a multi-year undercover investigation into Bob and I and the other people who were involved in our story. So he hired this person who then founded a fictitious company pretending he was a competitor of Peter Nygaard and that he wanted to investigate Peter Nygaard. pretending he was a competitor of Peter Nygaard and that he wanted to investigate Peter Nygaard. He sent journalists, phony journalists from the UK to Canada to talk to me to try and get me to say things about Peter Nygaard that they could then use against us. He had people phone me pretending to be other people. And he had this private investigator pretend to be this fashion person.

And they ended up roping in a private investigator that we had hired to help us in the Bahamas because it was a long ways away. We needed some help finding people. They ended up convincing him that this was real. And it went on for months and months where they were flying him around the world. They were paying him. They pretended to hire him. They were meeting with people. They were interviewing people all in a big, large ruse to try and find evidence, I guess, against us and our story. And what's interesting, this was all recorded, hidden camera, hidden microphone investigation. Wow, this is just such a wild story. Jamie, what they were charging at the heart of the case in court, the criminal case,

is that we, the CBC, along with such entities as the New York Times and various other people, and all the women who have been coming forward recently alleging rape and sexual assault, that we're all part of what they have called an international conspiracy to bring down Peter Nygaard, to destroy his reputation. And to this day, that's what the lawyers and the Nygaard PR people say. episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Bob, let's get into these conspiracy theories that you have brought up.

Yeah, and it's been called the battle of the billionaires, because liberally speaking, Peter Nygaard is or was, and a number of his neighbors are in that category, especially his next-door neighbor on Lyford Key outside NASA, a man named Louis Bacon, who is a Wall Street hedge fund billionaire. They're now retired, but recently retired. And you've got Peter Nygaard, who has these wild parties. And according to people in the vicinity, naked young women are staggering home afterwards or looking for help, naked and looking for help after these parties. So that was a lightning rod in the community. Tim described, where he was effectively charged by his neighbors and ultimately convicted on the charge of dredging up he learned about these young women and what had happened to them, and he couldn't ignore it.

So he did, in fact, contribute to an organization that is helping them and that has helped them to come forward and tell their stories. Nygaard is saying that that's the conspiracy. They're telling their stories because Louis Bacon is behind it all, because he is financially supporting this organization. So, like, essentially, when Nygaard is responding to these allegations, he's saying that he didn't do any of this, that this billionaire, Louis Bacon, that he has this long standing beef with, is the one driving these. Basically, is he saying that they're lies? He is saying they're lying. He's saying they're all lies. And they've been put up to this by Louis Bacon, as part of this giant feud. And, you know, it's become messy because there are

allegations that a couple of them have changed their stories, that they actually said they were lying. So there are some examples where it gets messy, it gets cloudy. And it's true to say that Louis Bacon has financially contributed to what's going on. But what people also say is just because someone financially contributes to someone doesn't mean necessarily that it's all a lie. And he says he says he couldn't not help, that it would take someone like me with my resources to stand up to someone like Peter Nygaard. And I couldn't look the other way. And I'm not going to apologize for what I've done. And now we know the FBI is also interested interested in what's going on. And we also

know that the police in the Bahamas are interested in what's going on. So it's not just Louis Bacon. And it's not just this lawsuit in New York. There are actually authorities involved as well. And Bob, what do we know about these ongoing investigations? Well, we know that there is a criminal investigation in the U.S. because the FBI has raided his office in New York and in Los Angeles. We also know, Tim discovered and reported, that there is an ongoing criminal investigation in the Bahamas as well, which is notable because it's been said that politicians and police officers go to his pamper parties on occasion. Well, we know that that was true because there's videotape of some of those people at Nygaard Key enjoying Mr. Nygaard's hospitality. So this is all part of this ongoing controversy surrounding Peter Nygaard. What's interesting is in the environmental case, Nygaard has been convicted of contempt of court because he

didn't show up in court to be tried. He was given a sentence, and a sentence that would increase by $5,000 in fines a day if he didn't show up. Well, he hasn't shown up for a couple of years, more or less, now. So he can't go to the Bahamas. He can't go back to his palatial estate without being arrested first. So he can't go back to, it's called Nygaard Key, right? He can't go back. And that's what people have said was one of the turning points in this. When the government actually took a stand, because he had a fair bit of support in the Bahamas, and we've been told he used money and influence to build that support.

That conviction was described as the turning point. And when that became public, there was sort of a public message in the Bahamas that it was received anyways, that Peter Nygaard didn't have the power he used to have. And that's maybe one of the reasons why we see this criminal investigation going on in the Bahamas now as well. Okay. Well, I certainly hope you'll both come back on to the show and we can talk about it as a really important story. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. You're welcome.

So before I let you go today, an update on the state of Nygaard's business in light of the allegations. After the FBI raided offices in New York and California, Nygaard said he would step down as chairman and divest his ownership stake. Then in March, a Manitoba judge ordered the company into receivership. That's all for this week. A big thank you to the Fifth Estate for bringing us their story. You can check out all their coverage by going on to cbc.ca slash fifth. That's all for this week. Front Burner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced this week by Mark Apollonio, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins,

Allie Janes, Nahayat Tizoush, and Ebion Abdigir. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design with help this week from Matt Cameron and Austin Pomeroy. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of FrontBurner is Nick McCabe-Locos, and I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We're back on Monday, and we'll talk to you then.