Nygard challenging extradition order to U.S.

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This article was published 20/04/2022 (883 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard is fighting an order by the federal justice minister that he be extradited to the U.S. to face sex charges.

In a notice of application filed Wednesday in the Manitoba Court of Appeal, Nygard is seeking to quash a March 22 order by federal Justice Minister David Lametti authorizing his extradition to the U.S. once a criminal case against him in Toronto has concluded.

Nygard, 80, has been held in custody since December 2020 when he was arrested in Winnipeg under the Extradition Act after being charged with nine sex-related offences in New York.

Last September, Toronto police charged Nygard with six counts of sexual assault and three counts of forcible confinement for offences against women alleged to have occurred between October 1987 and March 2006.

In late March, just days after Lametti issued his order, police in Montreal charged Nygard with one count each of sexual assault and forcible confinement for offences involving the same alleged victim between Nov. 1, 1997 and Nov. 15, 1998.

Last October, Nygard consented to extradition on a single charge of sex trafficking. Nygard’s consent was not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgement there was sufficient evidence to meet the “very low threshold” for extradition, Nygard’s lawyer Brian Greenspan said at the time.

Greenspan said Nygard’s legal team would be seeking assurances from the justice minister that Nygard would not be held in “inhumane” conditions while in detention in New York. Greenspan said Nygard would likely be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the subject of ongoing local news reports detailing its deteriorating conditions and infrastructure.

Lametti, in ordering Nygard’s extradition, “declined to seek any assurances as to the location of (Nygard’s) detention,” and was satisfied U.S. prison officials would place him in a facility best suited to meet his medical needs, Nygard’s notice of application said.

“It is respectfully submitted that the minister failed to critically examine the purported improvements to the conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center,” said the notice of application filed Wednesday. “It is submitted that these deplorable conditions continue to exist.”

Nygard’s lawyers argued Lametti erred in approving his extradition on all nine counts in the U.S. indictment — including racketeering, which has no comparable offence in Canada — and not just the one count of sex trafficking consented to by Nygard.

Lametti “did not address the submission that the conduct captured by the offence of racketeering in United States law does not amount to a criminal offence in Canada,” said the notice of application. “The principle of double criminality requires that the act charged in the requesting state be an offence in Canada.”

Nygard’s lawyers also argued Lametti failed to provide any assurance he would not be subject to civil proceedings in the U.S.

If committed to stand trial in a civil proceeding, Nygard could be ordered held in custody, even if acquitted of all criminal charges, a consequence that would “shock the Canadian conscience,” the notice of application said.

No date has been set to hear the application.

The U.S indictment against Nygard alleges that from 1995 to 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.”

Nygard is accused of using the “facade of legitimacy his fashion business created — as well as the Nygard Group’s business operations, reputation and resources — to facilitate and conceal his crimes,” U.S. authorities said.

In 2020, Winnipeg police investigated complaints of historical sex assaults from eight women before sending the files to prosecutors for review. In October, the Crown attorney’s office decided it would not pursue criminal charges against Nygard.

Last month, a judge ruled Richter Advisory Group, the receiver in control of nine Nygard companies since March 2020, could file for bankruptcy on their behalf. Nygard is appealing.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca