Heiress reveals liver disorder
Announcement made days before Bronfman’s sentencing hearing
An attorney for Clare Bronfman says the Seagram’s heiress and longtime NXIVM executive is facing a “possibly serious liver ailment” — a condition he revealed less than two days before his client’s sentencing for her crimes in Keith Raniere’s cult-like organization.
Bronfman, 41, is scheduling “medical follow-up visits, and we wanted the court to be aware of this situation,” Bronfman’s attorney, Duncan Levin, wrote in a letter Monday to the judge. “We also believe that this puts Clare at heightened health risk, given the status of the pandemic in the New York area.”
Bronfman, widely viewed as the financial muscle behind NXIVM and its operations director, will be sentenced Wednesday at 11 a.m. in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Under federal sentencing guidelines, the part-time Clifton Park resident faces 21 to 27 months in federal prison based upon her guilty pleas in 2019 to conspiracy to conceal and harbor illegal aliens for
financial gain, and fraudulent use of identification.
Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis is considering an “above guidelines” sentence that would bring Bronfman more jail time — and federal prosecutors have asked him to impose a five-year term. In turn, Bronfman’s new lawyers, hired in recent months, have said three years of probation is sufficient.
As the sentencing rapidly approaches, her lawyer revealed Bronfman’s illness.
“Just four days ago, she was diagnosed by her doctor with a possibly serious liver ailment,” Levin stated. Levin said Bronfman’s alanine aminotransferase, an enzyme found in the liver and kidneys, is at a “level that is twice what her doctor would like and expect to see.”
He did not ask that Bronfman’s sentencing be postponed. Bronfman’s lawyers also filed a sealed document with the court.
Bronfman has not disavowed Raniere, 60, known within NXIVM as “Vanguard,” who is expected to be sentenced on Oct. 27 on his convictions for sex
trafficking, forced labor conspiracy and racketeering charges that include underlying acts of child exploitation and possession of child pornography, extortion, identity theft and fraud, among other crimes.
Bronfman and her older sister, Sara BronfmanIgtet, who was in NXIVM for years as well, are the daughters of late Seagram’s tycoon Edgar Bronfman, whose opposition to the group angered Raniere. Bronfman’s sister and her husband, Basit Igtet, their mother, Georgiana Havers and her husband, Nigel Havers, asked the judge in a letter to be able to view the sentencing virtually given restrictions due to COVID -19.
The court’s response was unknown as of Tues
day night.
Barbara Bouchey, a former Raniere girlfriend and onetime senior member in NXIVM, is among the several people who will deliver victim statements at Bronfman’s sentencing Wednesday. She emailed the Times Union a copy of her remarks.
Bouchey said Bronfman, a former client of her financial planning company between 2005 and 2009, retaliated against her within 18 hours of Bouchey’s resignation from NXIVM in 2009 through threats of litigation and criminal charges.
“Little did I know that Keith’s retaliation to silence me for being the first whistleblower would subject me to a decade of the most malicious, wrongful litigation known by any of my attorneys, which was all funded by Clare,” she said. “The degree of pain and suffering due to their vexatious litigation has caused great devastation in my life, trauma, and irreparable damage to my professional reputation and business.”
Bouchey’s financial losses were $14 million, she said.
“Most have no idea the dear price that I paid over the years trying to expose, stop, hold them accountable, and bring about justice,” she stated.
Federal prosecutors have said Bronfman used her wealth to recruit immigrants — usually women — into Nxivm-related groups under the belief that they would get a scholarship or employment. They said Bronfman instead “secured a workforce of individuals desperate to earn a living and dependent on her, NXIVM and Raniere for their continued legal status in the United States.”
Prosecutors also said Bronfman showed “an astonishing lack of empathy for the financial struggles of others.” They said she steered the immigrants to take classes at NXIVM when they were barely able to make money.