By Frank Parlato

03/28/2010

How does one react to such a negative story, filled with so many inaccuracies as this one - published here by the New York Post -- under the guise of a news story?
One response, of course, is to ignore it on its face since it lacks credible comment (or any comment) and is obvious to the discerning reader as a story built on allegations contained in a pending lawsuit and presented as fact.
However, I have decided to respond to try and counter the negative rumor machine that was given fuel by the Post's one-sided, incomplete account of very complex negotiations and my role in those talks.
The most important response is that contrary to the allegations in the lawsuit, I never presented myself, in person or in documents, as representing Edgard Bronfman, the father of the Bronfman sisters who have been associated for some time now with NXIVM and Keith Raniere.
It is my feeling that the story was written to attack Keith Raniere and his group and that I was used to further that agenda without benefit of comment or even a minimal effort by the reporter to present a fair and accurate account of the facts of the Los Angeles development negotiations of which I did take part in a wholly professional manner.
It is obviously difficult to undo the damage done to me by this kind of reporting, especially with limited space. I would certainly hope that the Post would contact me in the future on any story that references me and that it allows me to comment, as is the custom in journalism in this country, when my name is a part of the story.
Let me just add in closing that it is quite unsettling and disturbing to be the negative focus of a story built on claims in a lawsuit and not have an opprtunity to respond. The Post must be aware that I do not take this matter lightly.

This comment is in response to the following article:

Seagram $$ scam employed fake Bronfman

By JEANE MacINTOSH

First he blew through $100 million of their fortune. Then a shady upstate Svengali dispatched a buddy to impersonate the billionaire father of two Seagram's liquor heiresses in an effort to conceal massive financial losses from a business partner, court records in a convoluted lawsuit claim.

Keith Raniere -- leader of cult-like, Albany-based self-help group NXIVM -- concocted the elaborate ruse involving liquor king Edgar Bronfman Sr. after Raniere ran out of money to fund a long-running commodities scheme and a real-estate development deal involving the mogul's two daughters, Clare and Sara, according to documents filed in a Los Angeles court.

According to the documents, Rainiere -- whom the senior Bronfman has blasted as a "cult" leader -- didn't have the dough to fund the project as promised, and wanted to cut the partner, Yuri Plyam, out of the equation before Plyam realized the truth.
So Raniere enlisted his pal, Frank Parlato Jr., to pretend he was a representative of the Seagram's boss.
Parlato's goal was to convince Plyam that Bronfman wanted to buy into the real-estate deal and cut Raniere out, the papers allege.
Parlato told Plyam that Bronfman "had been trying to get the girls out of the cult for a long time," and that getting in on the construction project would allow the old man to keep an eye on his -- and his daughters' -- investment, according to the documents.
Plyam believed Parlato, who continually disparaged the "destructive" Raniere and said Bronfman was desperate to "get his daughters out of NXIVM."
"The father feels that Raniere took advantage of his babies," Parlato told Plyam, according to the legal documents.
In reality, Parlato -- who in the 1990s was accused by Buffalo-area lawmakers of running a housing scam -- was working for Raniere, another set of court papers claim.
In an e-mail about the real-estate deal, one of Raniere's closest advisers, Kristin Keeffe, revealed that Parlato was being paid $1 million by the group to wrest control of the project from Plyam.
Bronfman adviser Stephen Herbits told The Post that "Parlato does not and has never represented Edgar M. Bronfman."

Comments:

mike hudson
03/28/2010 1:04 PM
I've been in the newspaper business for more than 30 years and this is just terrible. Generally, when reporting on a he-said, she-said civil lawsuit, both sides of the story are presented, people named in the story are called for comment etc. None of that seemed to happen here.

If you want to carry Edgar Bronfman's water for him, it would be far more effective to at least pretend like you're writing an actual news story.

catt
03/27/2010 2:54 PM
This article is such a disaster I can't understand any of it. Am I alone in concluding this is a journalistic piece of trash?

Namvet3
03/27/2010 1:06 PM
Is everyone in the Bronfman family, idiots? How in God's name did so much money get amassed by one man to be squandered by so many?

DPT2300
03/27/2010 10:47 AM
This article reads like it was cut & pasted, with large chunks of text deleted. It's a garbled mess.

YoungJeter
03/27/2010 9:59 AM
jeane- this article gives no backround is light in detail and frankly is a piece of garbage. You can do better. Take some classes.