A judge has rejected a request to freeze the assets of Montreal billionaire Robert Miller, accused of having paid minor girls for sex.
In a judgment released today, Superior Court Judge Eleni Yiannakis says the plaintiff failed to prove that there was a real risk that Robert Miller would disappear or hide his assets if he lost the lawsuit. against him.
Mr. Miller faces a class-action lawsuit, which has not yet been authorized, for allegedly paying minors for sex between 1996 and 2006.
Until his resignation in February, after allegations against him surfaced in a news report, he was chairman and CEO of global electronics distributor Future Electronics; he remains the owner and the company is in the process of being sold to a Taiwanese company for $3.8 billion.
Plaintiff’s lawyers argued that Mr. Miller would try to hide his money and wanted the judge to stop the sale of the company and freeze his assets unless he paid $200 million to the court pending the conclusion of the case.
Judge Yiannakis says the plaintiff in the lawsuit — a woman who says she was 17 when she was first paid for sex with Miller — failed to show that Mr. Miller was trying to conceal or to conceal any proceeds from the sale.
“There was no demonstration […] that there is a real risk that the defendants’ property will disappear,” the judge wrote.
Attorney Jeff Orenstein said that since filing the case, his firm has heard from 50 women who claim to have been victims of Mr. Miller’s sexual misconduct over a 30-year period beginning in the 1970s, some of whom were only 11 years old at the time.
Forty-one complainants have made statements describing their allegations, he said, adding that he expects more women to come forward.
Mr. Miller denies the allegations, which have not been tested in court.
Me Orenstein argued that the proceeds from the sale of Future Electronics risked disappearing into foreign bank accounts, beyond the reach of Quebec courts.
Additionally, he said he had been unable to find Mr. Miller to serve him with legal documents — signs, he said, that the defendant had disappeared or was in hiding.
The judge rejected these arguments, saying that the analysis of the facts “does not indicate ‘dishonest’ behavior on the part of Miller, nor can the court infer that he disappeared or that he hidden “.