Скачать или смотреть The $28 Billion Heiresses Who Funded A Sex Cult: The Bronfman Sisters

They could buy anything except purpose.

Four private jets sat in their hangars while the Bronfman sisters sought fulfillment through a self-help organization that would eventually face federal racketeering charges.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction
1:26 Chapter 1: Booze, Billions, and Birthright
6:05 Chapter 2: From Equestrian Dreams to Cult Extremes
11:04 Chapter 3: Bankrolling a Nightmare
17:00 Chapter 4: The Fall from Grace

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Clare and Sara controlled billions from their grandfather's Seagram liquor fortune yet remained spiritually impoverished, creating the perfect psychological vulnerability for a predatory guru to exploit.

Their money funded fifty million dollars in aggressive litigation against critics, covered Raniere's disastrous sixty-five million dollar commodities trading losses, and provided the real estate where women were eventually held in conditions federal prosecutors compared to forced labor.

Edgar Bronfman Senior watched helplessly as his daughters channeled their inheritance into an organization he publicly labeled a "cult" – a denunciation that only strengthened their resolve to prove their loyalty to Keith Raniere.

Two heiresses to one of North America's greatest fortunes spent one hundred fifty million dollars funding an organization that permanently marked women with its leader's initials.

The Bronfman fortune began when their grandfather Samuel—whose surname appropriately translates from Yiddish as "liquor-man"—founded Distillers Corporation Limited in Montreal in 1924, thriving during American Prohibition when his legally produced alcohol mysteriously found its way across the border.

By 1978, the Bronfman wealth had swelled to an estimated seven billion dollars—approximately twenty-eight billion in today's currency—making them one of North America's richest families and establishing a dynasty that spanned the globe.

Clare Webb Bronfman, born in 1979, and Sara Bronfman, born approximately two-and-a-half years earlier, were daughters of Edgar Bronfman Sr. and his third wife, Rita Webb—an Englishwoman whose father owned a pub in Essex.

This cosmopolitan yet rootless upbringing left both sisters searching for meaning despite their extraordinary privilege—access to private jets, elite education, entrée to the highest social circles, and the expectation they would eventually take their place among the global elite.

In 2001, twenty-five-year-old Sara Bronfman walked into her first NXIVM seminar searching for meaning and walked out with a newfound purpose that would eventually cost her family millions.

Clare was immediately captivated by NXIVM's teachings and Raniere's supposed wisdom, quickly becoming one of his most devoted followers and eventually abandoning her equestrian career to dedicate herself fully to NXIVM.

Between 2005 and 2018, the Bronfman sisters channeled an estimated one hundred fifty million dollars into NXIVM and Raniere's various ventures—a staggering sum that could have funded multiple hospitals, universities, or humanitarian programs around the world.

The sheer magnitude of their financial support became apparent when they covered an astonishing sixty-five point six million dollars of Raniere's nearly seventy million in commodities market losses—a financial disaster that would have bankrupted most investment funds but was simply absorbed by the Bronfman fortune.

NXIVM's carefully constructed façade crumbled in October 2017 when the New York Times published a devastating exposé titled "Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded," revealing how women in DOS were permanently marked with Keith Raniere's initials in painful ceremonies using a cauterizing pen.

In July 2018, Clare Bronfman was arrested in New York City and charged with racketeering conspiracy, identity theft, and money laundering—forcing the heiress who had funded lawsuits against NXIVM critics to face her own criminal indictment.

On September 30, 2020, Judge Nicholas Garaufis delivered a sentence that sent shockwaves through the courtroom: six years and nine months in prison—triple the maximum under federal guidelines and far beyond the twenty-one to twenty-seven months recommended by sentencing calculations.