Frank Stronach, the 91-year-old billionaire founding father of one of many world’s largest auto components firms, was arrested and charged on Friday in reference to a sexual assault investigation.
In a short information launch, the police drive for Peel Area, exterior Toronto, stated that the timeframe of crimes Mr. Stronach was alleged to have dedicated spanned from the Nineteen Eighties till final yr.
Mr. Stronach, the Austrian-born founding father of Magna Worldwide, was charged with offenses that includedindecent assault, sexual assault and forcible confinement. He was launched after being charged and can seem later at a court docket in Brampton, Ontario.
Brian Greenspan, Mr. Stronach’s lawyer, stated that his consumer “categorically denies the allegations of impropriety which have been introduced towards him.”
He added: “He appears to be like ahead to the chance to completely reply to the fees and to keep up his legacy, each as a philanthropist and as an icon of the Canadian enterprise neighborhood.”
Mr. Stronach turned a one-man machine store he based in 1957 into a world enterprise. Underneath his administration, Magna, which additionally assembles autos for a number of automakers together with Mercedes-Benz, tried to take over each Chrysler and Opel, the European arm of Normal Motors.
Traders in Magna typically chafed at how Mr. Stronach used his management over the corporate by way of a particular class of share to contain it in numerous, generally unprofitable, ventures unrelated to creating automobile components, together with a failed restaurant chain, a shiny enterprise journal, golf programs and horse racing. In 2010, Magna gave Mr. Stronach about $1 billion to cede management.
The Stronach Group, which he based and which is now run by his daughter, Belinda Stronach, owns or manages horse racing tracks all through america.
In 2013, Staff Stronach, a pro-business protest social gathering based by Mr. Stronach, gained two seats in Austrian state parliaments.
In a press release, Tracy Fuerst, a Magna spokeswoman, stated that it “has no data of the investigation or the allegations which were raised past what has been reported within the media.”
The Stronach Group didn’t reply to a request for remark.
It’s unclear why the fees have been filed in Peel, which is a part of the higher Toronto metropolitan space. Mr. Stronach lives in York, which can be within the Toronto space and the place Magna has its headquarters. Constable Tyler Bell, a spokesman for the police, declined to touch upon the investigation.
Whereas he led Magna, which made him at one level Canada’s highest-paid govt, Mr. Stronach typically provided iconoclastic financial and political theories or feedback that some discovered inappropriate. He started the corporate’s 2007 annual assembly not by discussing his bid for Chrysler, however by asking shareholders who was extra engaging to ladies, himself or his longtime aide, Manfred Gingl.
Mr. Stronach is the second Canadian billionaire to be charged with intercourse offenses in simply over every week. The police in Montreal introduced 21 sex-related fees towards Robert G. Miller, the founding father of Future Electronics, together with a number of counts of sexual exploitation of minors. The police drive stated that he had paid a number of younger ladies to carry out sexual acts.
