Nygard transferred to Toronto on sex charges

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This article was published 27/10/2021 (1154 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard has been taken to Toronto to face sex assault charges laid there last month.

“Toronto detectives came to Winnipeg and executed the arrest warrant (Thursday afternoon),” Nygard lawyer Jay Prober confirmed. “He will be appearing in court there (Friday) morning.”

Toronto police secured an arrest warrant on Sept. 29 for six counts of sexual assault and three counts of forcible confinement in connection to alleged incidents between October 1987 and March 2006.

The Winnipeg Police Service investigated Nygard from February to December 2020. The service sent eight files, based on eight women’s complaints, to prosecutors for review, but no charges were ever laid.

Nygard, 80, has been in custody since last December when he was arrested on a U.S. extradition warrant. He faces prosecution in New York on nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering.

The U.S indictment against Nygard alleges that from 1995 and 2020, Nygard — alongside his business associates and co-conspirators — engaged in a “pattern of criminal conduct involving at least dozens of victims in the United States, the Bahamas and Canada.”

Nygard is accused of raping and sex trafficking young girls, often targeting individuals from “disadvantaged backgrounds” with a “history of abuse,” and keeping them quiet via “threats, false promises of modelling opportunities” and “other coercive means.”

Earlier this month, on the same day news of the Toronto charges was released, Nygard agreed to extradition on a single count of sex trafficking, moving the process to the ministerial review stage.

It’s unclear which jurisdiction will have the opportunity to prosecute Nygard.

“It’s up to the minister of justice to make that decision whether he stays in Toronto and faces prosecution there or whether he surrenders” to U.S. authorities for extradition, Prober said.

Nygard continues to maintain his innocence.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca