New sex allegations against Stronach span decades
Latest charges involve seven complainants
The additional sex charges against 91-year-old business tycoon Frank Stronach involve seven complainants and allegations spanning from 1977 to this year, court documents show.
The most recent alleged sexual assault was this past February.
Ontario’s billionaire auto industry magnate and Order of Canada member was first arrested and charged on June 7 with five sex charges, including rape and forcible confinement, based on claims from three women alleging incidents as recently as last year and as far back as 1980.
The additional eight charges, filed in court Friday, widen the pool of alleged victims to 10 and expand that time frame of allegations back to 1977 and forward to early this year.
Through his lawyer, Stronach has denied all of the allegations.
He faces six additional charges of sexual assault and one each of attempted rape and indecent assault — although rape and indecent assault are charges no longer in the Criminal Code and date back to when previous versions of the Criminal Code of Canada was in effect.
In June 1977, in Toronto, Stronach is accused of attempting to have sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his wife, according to court documents. (The archaic wording of sex charges at the time differentiates between a victim who was a man’s wife and one who was not.)
In that same time frame and involving the same complainant, he is charged with indecent assault.
He is charged with sexual assault of six other complainants.
One between May and September 1983, also in Toronto; another between the same months but in 1988, also in Toronto; one between September and December 1990, in Scarborough; another between January 1999 and December 2003, in Aurora, just north of Toronto; and the last in February this year.
The charges were sworn by an officer with Peel Regional Police on June 28.
Stronach was informed of the charges and signed an undertaking to remain free of custody that same day.
He agreed to not have any communication with the complainants, not to go anywhere the complainants are known to be and to notify police before changing his address. After his previous charges, he also agreed to surrender his passport.
Stronach was born in Austria as Franz Strohsackin and immigrated to Canada in 1932 with little money and rudimentary English.
“He is the quintessential 20th century rags-to-riches story in Canadian industry,” said Dimitry Anastakis, a professor of Canadian business history at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
When he had saved enough, he started a tiny tool-and-die business in Toronto, working long hours and watching it grow. He signed his first contract to make a part for an automaker — metal clips for a car’s sun visor — in 1959, moved his company north to York Region, and nurtured it to become an international auto juggernaut.
Stronach became a household name because of his outspoken views, outsized wealth and his compelling rags-to-riches story.
Canadians watched his rise to billionaire tycoon status as the founder of Magna International over decades and a leading investor in horse racing and other industries.
He also ran for public office, losing his bid to be a Liberal member of Parliament in Canada. His daughter, Belinda Stronach, later
was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative, but crossed the floor to become a Liberal Cabinet Minister in 2005 under Prime Minister Paul Martin.
He launched a political party in his native Austria in 2012, called Team Stronach für Österreich, German for Team Stronach for Austria.
He often cited an old maxim about the power wealth brings: “The history of mankind has been dominated by the golden rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.”
Stronach has a court appearance scheduled for July 8 in Brampton, Ont.