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EVIL BY DESIGN

Episode Two: “Carte Blanche”

Timothy Sawa: The following episode contains difficult subject matter and references to sexual assault. Please take care.

Sound Clip: [cheering and applause]

Sound Clip: [man] And now, the man of the hour! Please ladies and gentlemen, welcome Peter J. Nygard!

Timothy Sawa: Peter Nygard walks onto a stage flanked by a troupe of models. Blue and white dresses flow out behind them. Fireworks explode on a gigantic video screen. And blasts of smoke shoot up as Nygard walks by. The auditorium glows electric blue, his signature colour. It’s late summer 2018, and Peter Nygard is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his international clothing empire. By this time, he has hundreds of stores and distributors. A headquarters in New York’s Time Square. More than 1,500 employees. And more than 200 million dollars in annual sales. But his clothes, they were never high fashion. Nygard stores were found mostly in suburban strip malls. Or you could buy his clothes at Dillard’s, Costco or Wal-Mart. They were ‘accessible’, reasonably-priced, comfortable. You may never have heard of Nygard or shopped there yourself, but chances are someone you know has.

Sound Clip: [female customer] I think his collections are very, very smart. They're the kind of clothes that women want to wear.

Sound Clip: [female customer 2] Well, one of the reasons why I liked Peter Nygard’s clothing is that it's not gimmicky.

Sound Clip: [female customer 3] His clothes are very different. And there's a lot of marketing also behind there. And he's quite a showman.

Timothy Sawa: And Nygard was a salesman. Here he is in a 1993 interview:

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] People don't buy clothes because they have to buy them, they buy for the excitement of it, for the interest of it. It's like movie industry, you know, it's just exciting, it's glamorous. It's fantasy world. And you have to market that.

Timothy Sawa: Nygard’s success would make him a celebrated Canadian entrepreneur, a fixture on the list of the nation’s richest. In his hometown of Winnipeg, he’d become a household name. There would be his private plane, N-Force along with operations in LA, New York, Toronto, and Taipei. And eventually, Nygard would build his dream home in the Bahamas. 6 acres of Caribbean paradise where so many lives would be damaged. For decades, it seemed nothing could stop him. Until an unlikely group of Bahamian environmentalists decided they had to try.

I’m Timothy Sawa. And this is “Evil by Design”, Episode Two: “Carte Blanche”.

The town of Deloraine, Manitoba, is a few hours outside of Winnipeg, just across the border from North Dakota. At the north end of town, sits a small park. For close to 20 years, it bore the name of one of Deloraine’s favourite sons, Peter Nygard, though not anymore. In the early 50s, a 10-year-old Nygard moved here from Finland with his family. Decades later, he celebrated his humble beginnings in promotional videos posted on his website describing his first home in Deloraine as a converted coal bin.

Peter Nygard: We didn't have running water. We didn't have heat. We lit up a stove that was in the middle of that room. It heated the place. We cooked on it. We had a rusty barrel on the snow. We were 40 below zero. Going to outdoor toilets somewhere. You know, we slept in one bed. We all sagged in the middle of it, you know, laundry and everything over the kitchen table. We collected bottles…

Timothy Sawa: This would be Nygard’s origin story. The beginning of his so-called transformation from rags to riches.

Sound Clip: [Fortunes - How to Make Millions host] Peter Nygard is a blatantly successful entrepreneur. He's made a religion of winning in the marketplace. Nygard attributes much to his Finnish parentage. The spirit of competition was instilled in him he says by his poor, hardworking parents who immigrated to Winnipeg when Nygard was a child.

Timothy Sawa: Nygard’s family soon left Deloraine for Winnipeg, where he grew up before leaving to attend the University of North Dakota. After returning to Canada, Nygard took a job at a struggling local clothing company. In 1967, in his mid-twenties after saving and borrowing, he became an investor.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] I've gambled my whole life on this deal, going for this. Without one ounce of training and all by myself.

Timothy Sawa: Within a decade, he owned the company, renaming it Tan Jay. This was the beginning of Nygard, the empire.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] When I got into the industry, the postwar baby boom was occurring and everyone's telling me that half the population is under the age of 25. And, you know, I sort of cleverly figured out that if half of them is under 25, the other half must be over 25. And if everybody is going after this, then maybe I should go over the 25. We've built a garment for the average 40-year-old who has the average problems of her figure. Who tends to be a little heavier at the hips and smaller on the top. There's a shape that we rather not admit it, but that is our shape. And we faced the reality of it.

Timothy Sawa: By the late 70s, Nygard was becoming one of the biggest players in the

Canadian garment industry.

Sound Clip: [Fortunes - How to Make Millions host] How would you like a limousine in Los Angeles which doubles as an office?

Sound Clip: [sound of Excalibur horn]

Sound Clip: [Fortunes - How to Make Millions host] And half a dozen Excaliburs for your leisure driving. A little real estate in the Bahamas, perhaps. And a thriving

multi-million dollar business in Canada. Peter Nygard, the man on the left, has got these things by using a success formula. He drives himself day in and day out towards one whopper of a goal.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] If you want to be the best in the world, that's all you can pursue. You can't-- you can't be all things to everybody. You can take one at a time, you know, and you can really try to get good at it. But if you really want to be one of the top in a world of tops in North America or something like that, you can't pursue much more than that.

Timothy Sawa: As his business fortunes grew, so did the stories about his personal life.

In 1979, a documentary profile followed him while he jetted between the Bahamas, LA and Winnipeg.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] Let me get this hair out of my face.

Sound Clip: [Woman laughs]

Timothy Sawa: In an early scene, Nygard flirts with a tanned blonde woman who helps him adjust his headband while he gets ready to go sailing.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] Let me look in your eyes so I can see. Look in your eyes.

Sound Clip: [woman] So you can see when you put it on…

Sound Clip: [Fortunes - How to Make Millions host] Now a 38 year old bachelor, his single minded drive is his entire lifestyle.

Timothy Sawa: We see Nygard palling around with celebrities in Los Angeles.

Sound Clip: [Fortunes - How to Make Millions host] Here he indulges his sizable ego by cultivating friends like TV star David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame.

Timothy Sawa: A final scene is one of Nygard running along the beach, bare chested, his long blonde hair streaming out behind him.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] You are married to this obsession that you have, this goal that you have, you get a tremendous satisfaction out of training, for whatever you train.

Sound Clip: [Closing credit music]

Timothy Sawa: Nygard soon became known as a ‘work hard, play-hard’ playboy entrepreneur. Profiles often mention the fact that he lived at the office - his Winnipeg headquarters housing a bedroom. Reporters wrote of a sectional sofa that transformed into a bed at the flick of a switch, while other switches locked doors, dimmed lights and piped in romantic music under a mirrored ceiling. Articles from the time outlined his taste in women and Nygard himself was described as having quote, “Viking/Gatsby” good looks. For decades, Nygard has tried to capitalize on this image. It was an affordable women’s clothing label, but the advertising often featured Nygard himself, muscles bulging and shirt unbuttoned.

Sound Clip: [Paul McKie] I'm not from Winnipeg originally. So, when I got here, it was hard to miss the stores and what I consider those Soviet era style posters of Nygard with his arms folded, his golden locks flowing and looking across the horizon. They were freakish, actually. It was very hard to avoid.

Timothy Sawa: Paul McKie moved to Winnipeg in the 80s, becoming a journalist for the city’s largest paper.

Sound Clip: [Paul McKie] Even his outward appearance was quite different than what you would think of the average business person. He was certainly more flamboyant and kind of had a pseudo-Fabio thing going on. Winnipeg can be a very small C conservative town. So, he certainly stood out in that respect.

Timothy Sawa: Even as a newcomer to the city, Paul would soon learn about Peter Nygard’s exploits.

Sound Clip: [Paul McKie] You would hear stories, you know, gossip about his reputation. Just that he was a ladies’ man, whatever. And that kind of has a 1960s Rat Pack ring to it.

Timothy Sawa: That reputation stuck. As recently as 2015, Vanity Fair compared him to another man, whose personal and professional brand, was that of a playboy calling Nygard the “Hugh Hefner of down-market retail.” Ever since Nygard burst onto the public stage, his personal image has been carefully crafted. But as I would later learn, even the most insignificant details could be stretched. For example, the daughter of the Nygards’ landlord from the 1950s disputed his description of that converted coal bin, she told me the space was actually a heated back kitchen with a pump for running water. And it was never used for coal. But the self-promotional tour didn’t stop. Its final destination was Nygard’s most celebrated achievement what he refers to as the eighth wonder of the world.

Sound Clip: [male announcer] This is Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Television’s unchallenged authority on wealth, prestige and the good life.

Sound Clip: [male host] Our search for the very best never ends. And so, we proudly present from the sun-drenched Bahamas under-construction what will suddenly be the world's most unique house, if not the world's largest.

Timothy Sawa: It was Nygard’s most lavish display of wealth and excess.

Sound Clip: [male host] Fashion mogul, Peter Nygard, who also has designs on nature, chose exclusive Lyford Cay in the sparkling Bahama Islands to fashion his greatest creation ever.

Timothy Sawa: After increasingly spending time in the Bahamas through the seventies, Nygard began building his palatial estate in 1984. With permission from the Bahamian government, he renamed his land Nygard Cay, just in time for an appearance in this 1992 episode of ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’ It had been known as Simms Point for the past 400 years.

Sound Clip: [male host] Like Christopher Columbus, whose first taste of the new world was exactly here five hundred years ago, Peter discovered the very tip of this island paradise and called it his own.

Timothy Sawa: It started with a modest beach house in a one-thousand-acre gated community called Lyford Cay. It’s considered one of the wealthiest and most exclusive in the world. That original beach house would eventually become the security booth and staff office, to the sprawling estate Nygard would go on to design and construct for more than twenty years.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] We'd been living in Winnipeg, which you're familiar with, 40 below. And I’d never been to a warm country in my life. And when I had a chance quite early my life. I end up coming here and I saw this beautiful place with beautiful water, these beautiful people here. And I said, that's for me. So, I always had this dream about building on an island, going from water to water. It was a little wee island when I was younger, then it got bigger, bigger. And I ended up with this biggest house in the world.

Timothy Sawa: Here, Nygard and his usual entourage of young women could surround themselves with comfort and luxury. There were volleyball, basketball and tennis courts, a disco, a 24-seat movie theatre, and what he declared was the world’s largest sauna.

Sound Clip: [Peter Nygard] There's a lot of celebrities who have been coming here. You know, almost every person who comes to the island wants to see this. A lot of-- most I guess are famous movie stars. And then we have the rap guys, you know, come over here and the basketball players. We had all the church leaders over here, you know, so it goes from everywhere.

Timothy Sawa: George H.W. Bush; Michael Jackson; Robert De Niro, and Duchess Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew have all spent time at Nygard Cay. As well as countless prominent Bahamians.

Sound Clip: [quiet driving sounds]

Timothy Sawa: I travelled to the Bahamas, to Nygard Cay, to see this so-called “eighth

wonder” in person. And I’d find out it was Nygard’s limitless ambitions for this property, that would eventually see him forced out of the Bahamas, setting the stage for the wave of allegations to come.

Sound Clip: [quiet driving sounds]

Timothy Sawa: One sunny afternoon in February 2020, a colleague and I drove west from the airport in Nassau. The sparkling, jewel-like sea pops in and out of view, through palm trees and coastal homes. Twenty minutes later, we pass through the outer gates of Lyford Cay on our way to where Nygard built his massive beach side estate. I’ve seen it several times over the years, from a plane, a drone and by peeking through the gates. The best view, however, comes by circling it in a boat. We cruise along stunning Old Fort Bay. As we head towards the point, Nygard Cay comes into view. Gigantic stone lions guard Nygard’s private seawater-filled lagoon. Mayan style temples tower behind it. Cabanas made from glass and rock sit in the treetops jutting out over sea. As we come around the point, we see the beaches. The bluest water laps up on several acres of the whitest sand you’ll ever see. If someone built a Disneyland for adults, this is what it would look like. My tour guide today is Joe Darville, a local conservationist who holds the impressive title, Grand Bahama Coastal Waterkeeper.

Timothy Sawa: What drives that passion for you about Mother Earth as you call it?

Joe Darville: Well, I think because when I grew up on the island you know we survive from the land and we survive from the sea. I knew that a long time ago that the archipelagic nation of Bahamas was the most beautiful spot on planet earth. So, what more can I say? I mean whatever I'm gonna do and have to do to safeguard it for my people, I will do it without fear or trepidation.

Timothy Sawa: Joe’s determination to safeguard the environment would eventually see him at war with Nygard.

Timothy Sawa: So, when did you first hear the name Peter Nygard?

Joe Darville: Well Peter Nygard was not known to me until I found out certain things that he was doing to deprive this beautiful area of what we have here today.

Timothy Sawa: While Nygard made himself popular with some Bahamians, he alienated others with what they saw as a blatant disregard for the environment. By dredging the seabed and redirecting the sand, Nygard damaged ecosystems, while swelling the size of those beautiful personal beaches. Environmentalists like Joe, and Nygard’s neighbours on Lyford Cay, were outraged.

Joe Darville: In the past, our authorities have allowed individuals who come from abroad and even in cahoots with some of our local people to cordon off all of these beautiful areas that were once open to all Bahamians to enjoy. When we saw what Nygard was doing over there on Simm's Point, within a number of years he was extending it, accreting his land. and then when he saw how beautiful and magnificent it was, and how many parties he could have on that beach, then he said well you know I want more sand on my beach and so in addition to more groynes and gabions and so on, out over the seabed on top of coral reefs and grasses where turtles fed, he did everything possible.

Timothy Sawa: Joe Darville took up the legal fight to stop Nygard’s environmental abuses and joining him was Reverend CB Moss. He’s a local pastor, activist and conservationist. We interviewed him, sitting in the pews of his Nassau church.

CB Moss: Mr. Nygard felt that he could have his way in doing what he wanted to do. Disregarding the fact that the land that he had accreted belonged to the Bahamian people. And he was not willing to discuss it. He just wanted to have his way. Once we engaged a battle with him, we saw an effort to generate goodwill. He would sponsor sporting activities, cultural activities. And he acted benevolently and he assisted those who were in need and people are now realizing that this benevolence was really towards a purpose, a selfish purpose. This public kindness, perhaps, was a plan to secure the good will and support of the community, that he would be able to do what he wanted to do.

Timothy Sawa: For Reverend Moss and the others, the legal battle against Nygard was long, and grueling.

Joe Darville: we have a good system in law, legalities in the courts in the Bahamas. And so we were able to win every single battle against him and that raged on for, like, 6 years almost with about 25 judicial reviews. Cause every time we would win, they would come up with some other concoction in order for us to spend more time, more money to bring action against him. Another disturbing thing was because he had been given sort of tacit, under the table permissions to do what he was doing, we had to fight against not just him but we had to fight against the government. We had to fight against the former PLP government who gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to do.

Timothy Sawa: Nygard wasn’t your average ultra-rich foreigner in the Bahamas. There are many of those. He gave millions to the Progressive Liberal Party or PLP, who were in power, on and off, for a total of 15 years during Nygard’s time in the Bahamas. As a permanent resident since 1986 who invested heavily in local politicians, he seemed to expect something in return. Over time, those expectations got bigger and bigger.

Joe Darville: There’s a whole bunch of them. Because even at one particular point in time Nygard had the gall to write to our prime minister. And say, you know, I've donated this amount of money. I would say that that's a good amount, wouldn't you? And, like, one hand shake the other hand, I mean you don't do that to government officials, particularly prime ministers in the country.

Timothy Sawa: What Joe’s talking about is a, now notorious letter Nygard sent to Perry Christie, who was a cabinet minister in 1992. In the early 90s, Nygard pledged 45,000 dollars to the PLP, Christie’s party. In the letter sent a couple of years later, he referenced his quote, “significant” pledge, and asked for help in officially renaming his expanded property Nygard Cay. He wrote, quote, “Obviously, this whole world is based on one hand helping the other and you know that I am prepared to do whatever is in my capacity to help out the Bahamas and the PLP party and of course yourself in any way I can.”

Joe Darville: I'm 78 years old and I've enjoyed every iota of it, I don't know how long I’m gonna be around but I want to do everything I can to make sure that these beautiful islands, archipelagic Nation of the Bahamas is preserved for Bahamians, inviting people from abroad to enjoy it along with us but not to come here with deep pockets and think you can buy out our politicians. That has to stop.

Timothy Sawa: Perry Christie would later be elected Prime Minister twice. In 2011, Christie travelled all the way to Winnipeg, to attend the wedding of one of Nygard’s daughters.

Sound Clip: [Perry Christie] Let me first congratulate the bride and groom.

Timothy Sawa: In a speech, he says of Nygard:

Sound Clip: [Perry Christie] He is a significant personality in the Bahamas. Known for his philanthropy, a contributor to those who are in need.

Timothy Sawa: Nygard says he later contributed at least 5 million dollars to Christie. There are no campaign financing limits in the Bahamas. Through his representatives, Nygard denies all accusations of political corruption. When I called Christie for his response, he said there was nothing untoward about his financial relationship with Nygard.

Prime Minster Christie: I spent 43 years in public life. There's no equivocation about my commitment to integrity. And so I just want to be able to say it clearly, as strongly as I possibly can to you. I have no fear of any investigation into my conduct in my public life.

Fred Smith They were giving him a get out of jail free card. I mean the PLP to this day will say that never succumbed to Nygard’s corruption offers to us.

Timothy Sawa: Fred Smith is a prominent Bahamian human rights lawyer, an outspoken critic of government corruption, among other things.

Fred Smith I’m quite an activist in the Bahamas on the rule of law, human rights, environmental issues. So I was seduced into this environmental organization.

Timothy Sawa: As the environmentalists fighting Nygard took their dispute to the

courts, Fred was called in to help. Their organization is called Save The Bays, where Fred still serves as legal director. It takes less than an hour to fly from Nassau to Miami. That’s where we caught up with Fred. He was living at a hotel on the edge of a golf course, recovering from a recent paragliding accident that almost killed him. He broke both of his feet and his back in two places but nothing it seems, would slow him down. For all three men, it would be a long and ugly fight with people who were loyal to Peter Nygard.

Fred Smith It got nasty enough for Mr Nygard according to our allegations to hire very dangerous men to kill us and you know, we eventually launched a case in the Bahamas.

Timothy Sawa: In that lawsuit, two men swore that Nygard had hired them as hitmen. Those claims have not been tested in court. In a separate incident, Fred also says nine men accosted him, just across the Bay from Nygard Cay. The attack was so violent they broke through the windshield of Fred’s car. Fred Smith wasn’t the only Bahamian who felt targeted. Reverend Moss again.

CB Moss: We were threatened. Our office was broken into. Our car was firebombed. My vehicle was parked in front of my home. It was about 2 o'clock in the morning and my daughter was up for some reason and she saw a vehicle slowly driving by and she became suspicious. And she kept an eye on it and the vehicle came back and two individuals got out and threw an incendiary device on the car and the car went up in flames and they drove off. We managed to extinguish it because my daughter was actually on the scene. And it was frightening but it didn't deter us because we believe that we just had to go through with what we were going through because it was of such great importance to the Bahamian people. And in addition to that, we were not going to be intimidated.

Timothy Sawa: Nygard denies any involvement in or knowledge of those kinds of attacks. But no matter who was behind them, the onslaught against the conservationists was two-pronged: physical intimidation and public smear campaigns.

Fred Smith: I mean the abuse was virulent on the radio, on the tv, in the press, in social media. You know In the Bahamas, when you go against the government you become public enemy number one basically. Especially if the opposition isn’t that strong or powerful and it was quite weak at the time. They had these huge rallies up and down Bay Street, sometimes 2 or 3, 4000 people with banners about Fred Smith and Reverend Moss and Joe Darville, you see the Bahamas being such a small place, it can get very frightening as well when you whip up crowds who have no idea who Fred Smith or Joe Darville are, but you just whip up this energy against them and then it has the effect of ostracizing them from a lot of society.

Timothy Sawa: Through it all, Fred says one man was crucial in their fight against Nygard: Louis Bacon. An American billionaire and former hedge fund manager, Bacon is a director of that environmental group, Save the Bays. He has properties in New York’s Upper East Side, the Scottish moors, Panama and a home in Lyford Cay, right next door to Nygard. Nygard and Bacon’s respective properties could not be any more opposite in how they look and feel. You’ve already heard about Nygard Cay. In contrast, Bacon’s property is subdued and simple, his pride and joy appears to be a perfectly manicured croquet pitch where you can imagine guests playing a quiet game on a Sunday afternoon. Like Nygard however, Bacon is litigious. What began as a feud over a shared driveway and Nygard’s raucous parties, has turned into at least 10 years of litigation, involving dozens of legal actions, all around the world. Since arriving in the Cay in 1994, Bacon has been a major contributor to local conservation efforts.

Fred Smith: He has financially, along with others but to a great extent financed Save the Bays and their environmental work, in Abaco, in other places, in Grand Bahama, in Nassau, on other environmental issues other than Peter Nygard. He puts his money where his mouth is on environmental issues and had it not been for a person with such deep pockets, and such moral and ethical commitment to the rule of law. I dare say Nygard would still be there today in full battle gear with the PLP.

Timothy Sawa: Bacon’s continued bankrolling of the environmentalists kept their court battles against Nygard alive. And in the end, the environmentalists’ determination paid off. In 2013, a Bahamian Supreme Court Judge ordered Nygard to stop the dredging. Four years later, the same judge slapped him with a 5-figure fine for violating that order, and threatened him with jail time if he didn’t pay. Then came a major blow in 2019. A judge sentenced Peter Nygard to 90 days in jail and fined him $150,000 dollars for breaching another court order. Nygard never saw the inside of a Bahamian jail, mainly because he hasn't been back to the Bahamas since 2018.

Joe Darville: In a final analysis, I don't think he could set foot on this island again or he's gonna end up in jail because there is a warrant out for his arrest, because he's refused to show up for sentencing. And so we can rejoice today, really, really rejoice.

CB Moss: He was always behaving in a manner that was bigger than life but the fact that he is, virtually, now banned from the Bahamas, people are saying good riddance.

Timothy Sawa: The conservationists' fight against Nygard undermined whatever pull he had in the Bahamas. Then, the government he backed lost power. And once Nygard could no longer expect to be protected by his money and influence, everything began to unravel. Far more disturbing information would emerge about Peter Nygard. Fred Smith.

Fred Smith: So, the public and the people around Nygard started to see that the law could actually work, the judicial system functioned in the Bahamas. That is one branch of government that has remained independent of corruption and politics and so more and more people just started talking about, we can give you information about Nygard building without permits or here are pictures of him dredging without a permit. And then filtering in were these pamper parties aren’t what they seem, that there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes and it wasn’t until 2016 that a few people started to share information about women being abused at Nygard Cay sexually.

Timothy Sawa: Fred and the others had to tread very carefully.

Fred Smith: Mr Nygard has in the past tended to set up sting operations or tried to create situations where he would entrap a lawyer or an investigator, or someone, with false information and if they went to use it to then show, ah! This is further evidence of the conspiracy against me and so we were very careful initially in speaking with any of these informants about what they were sharing with us and it became very important to actually hear it from the victims themselves about what was happening.

Timothy Sawa: Fred and other Bahamian lawyers started collecting the stories of a growing number of young women who said they’d been raped by Nygard. So many came forward, that Fred, with Louis Bacon’s help, decided to create an organization to support them. Many of these women joined the class action lawsuit, filed in early 2020, suing Nygard for rape and human trafficking. And dozens more signed on. Among the Jane Does are several so-called “girlfriends.” The lawsuit alleges these were women who were paid for sex, companionship, and servitude out of the Nygard companies’ payroll. And that Nygard coerced some of them into having sex with politicians, police officers, and business associates, for his own gain. But because some plaintiffs got support from Fred and Louis Bacon, Nygard and his representatives had a counterclaim to all of the allegations: That all the women are lying and this is all a vast conspiracy funded and organised by Louis Bacon, to destroy Nygard’s reputation. This is Jay Prober, Nygard’s lawyer:

Jay Prober: The allegations are completely false. They'll be vigorously defended. They are part of a vicious and malicious conspiracy, which has been going on for about 10 years against Nygard by his enemies.

Timothy Sawa: The survivors we’ve spoken to who are part of the lawsuit deny this. And are looking forward to their day in court. Although Fred Smith and others may have won their battle over the environment, the allegations of rape and sex-trafficking point to an even bigger problem.

Fred Smith The Bahamas is my home. I hate to speak ill of my home, but I have been doing so for 43 years now in the field of human rights and environmental rights. It’s a piratical, opportunistic society going back to the years of the pirates and then the rum running and then the drugs, and then, notwithstanding you know the beautiful hotels and everything, the Bahamas is a very poor country. And corruption is endemic, it is ubiquitous and it is rife in the Bahamas. Worse still, the whole social acceptance that, you know, sex tourism is okay, that sex with young girls is okay. You know, we’re fighting human trafficking, and we’re fighting sex tourism and this would be a really good opportunity for the Bahamas to purge itself of a lot of these horrific embedded social mores.

Timothy Sawa: As this was all playing out, someone was watching intently. Someone closer to Nygard than most. If women and girls had been raped at his home in the Bahamas, she would be the key to unlocking those secrets. Her story is complex, challenging, but ultimately instrumental to the fall of Peter Nygard and soon she would be free to tell that story to the world.

Coming up…

Richette: He himself when he got on my massage table, would start to share his innermost darkest secrets. When I did what I did for Mr. Nygard, I did it because I didn't really have a choice. Mr. Nygard had us order two kits of fish and he had me and two notorious gangsters here in Nassau stuff the fish with about one hundred and fifty

thousand dollars in cash. If Nygard asks you to jump, you ask him how high, where to land and in what position. You don't tell Nygard no.

Timothy Sawa: If anything you’ve heard in this episode has left you looking for someone to talk to, please visit cbc.ca/uncover. We have a number of resources there for those in need of help and support. ‘Evil By Design’ is a co-production between CBC Podcasts and The Fifth Estate. You can find the Fifth Estate’s latest documentary 'Peter Nygard: The Secret Videos' on YouTube. This podcast is written by Producer, Ashley Mak, Associate Producer, Ilina Ghosh and me, Timothy Sawa. With assistance from Lynette Fortune at The Fifth Estate. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. With technical assistance from Laura Antonelli. For this episode, special thanks goes to Bob McKeown and Korvell Pyfrom. Fact-checking by Emily Mathieu and legal advice from Sean Moreman. Emilie Quesnel is our digital producer. Original music by Olivia Pasquarelli. Our Senior Producer at CBC Podcasts is Chris Oke. And our Executive Producer is Arif Noorani.

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Transcript: Evil By Design Episode 2

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