Like many Canadians, I was stunned when news broke in early June that billionaire businessman Frank Stronach had been arrested and charged with 5 criminal offences, including rape, sexual assault and forcible confinement.
That’s when The Fifth Estate producer Shelley Ayres started looking into the story.
Weeks later during the Canada Day long weekend, our investigation took a surprising turn when a one-line email popped up in my inbox.
It read, “Frank Stronach wants to connect with you.”
I do not know Frank Stronach- beyond reading about his illustrious career as the founder and former CEO of the global auto parts giant Magna International.
I have never met him. Never interviewed him. So why did he want to connect with me?
Over the course of several phone calls and 2 in-person meetings, he said he wanted me to tell his story and, as he put it, explain to Canadians “who I am, what I’ve done, the way I think.”
I interviewed him in early August in downtown Toronto and then again at his horse stables in Aurora, ON, in late September.
Stronach has dismissed the charges against him, which now stand at 18, involving 13 women, as, “Lies. Lies. Lies.”
Of course, that did not deter The Fifth Estate from investigating the charges, which span almost 5 decades.
And as we uncovered more recent allegations against him, incidents that allegedly happened this year, made by former employees at Stronach’s organic restaurant in Aurora, what emerged was what some women described as a disturbing pattern of predatory behaviour that has at least one of his alleged victims asking why it took police so long to press charges against him.
In my last interview with Stronach, he told me he had contacted me because “I watched your program. And I said that guy is pursuing the truth.”
Watch “Stronach: Power and Silence” right now on YouTube and tonight at 9 p.m. on CBC-TV, CBC Gem and streaming on CBC News Explore.
Mark Kelley,
Host, "Stronach: Power and Silence" |
