Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman pleads guilty in NXIVM New York ‘sex slave cult’ case

Philanthropist and former show jumper told the judge she wanted to help people through NXIVM but ended up dishonouring her family

Bronfman gave away more than US$100 million of her fortune to bankroll 58-year-old Keith Raniere and his intense self-improvement programme

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Clare Bronfman leaving court with her lawyer Mark Geragos on March 27, 2019. Photo: AP

Published: 9:08am, 20 Apr 2019Updated: 9:29pm, 20 Apr 2019

An heiress pleaded guilty on Friday in a sensational case accusing a cultlike upstate New York group of creating a secret harem of sex slaves for the group’s self-anointed spiritual leader.

Clare Bronfman admitted in her plea in federal court in Brooklyn that she harboured someone who was living in the US illegally for unpaid “labour and services” and committed credit card fraud on behalf of Keith Raniere, the lead of a group called NXIVM.

Clare Bronfman outside the court on April 8, 2019. Photo: AP

Bronfman is the 40-year-old daughter of late Canadian billionaire philanthropist and former Seagram chairman Edgar Bronfman, whose net worth was estimated at US$2.6 billion.

She told the judge she wanted to help people through NXIVM but ended up dishonouring her family.

“I was afforded a great gift by my grandfather and father,” Bronfman said. “With the gift, comes immense privilege and more importantly, tremendous responsibility. It does not come with an ability to break the law.”