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Mark
Nathanson is flustered, clearly not used to
questions about his life and his career.
``I've lived in the shadows,'' he says.
``Quietly.'' Not so quietly now. This week,
at a ceremony in Toronto, Solicitor General
Herb Gray will lead an international group
of academics, politicians, judges, police
officers and lawyers in a celebration of an
extraordinary, $3-million gift that
Nathanson has made to Osgoode Hall Law
School at York University. Its purpose: to
fund the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre for
the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption.
The centre, named after Nathanson's parents,
is the only one of its kind in Canada, and
has few counterparts anywhere in the world.
And the man funding it is intriguing in his
own right. At 50, Nathanson, one of two
children of a family that operated a
wholesale grocery company in Sydney, N.S.,
has quietly built an immense fortune with an
impressive array of enterprises: from
African gold mining to consumer electronics,
and from intelligence equipment used by
governments to an international forensic
investigation company headed by his close
friend and partner, Rod Stamler, former
assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. ``I always wanted to be a
policeman,'' says Nathanson, sitting in the
spacious condominium in downtown Toronto
that he visits a few weeks each year. ``But
I didn't want to live on a policeman's
salary. I had to make some money first.''
While Nathanson has built a business empire
that spans the globe, the academic venture
he is now funding will study the ways in
which the global economy has made both
companies and countries increasingly
vulnerable to organized crime. ``Canadians
tend to believe the best of each other,''
says Osgoode Hall dean Marilyn Pilkington.
``But they can't afford to be vulnerable
through lack of awareness.'' To open
immediately, the centre will be headed by
York criminologist Margaret Beare, author of
Criminal Conspiracies: Organized Crime in
Canada, published last year. And its
advisory board reads like a who's who of
criminal law: Ward Elcock, director of the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, RCMP
Commissioner Philip Murray, Toronto police
Chief David Boothby, lawyers Edward
Greenspan and John Rosen (defence lawyer of
convicted murderer Paul Bernardo), and
Antonio Nicaso,
managing editor at the Italian-language
daily Corriere Canadese, and an expert on
organized crime, who conceived the original
idea for the centre.
Working with officials at York, that
impressive team has created an
interdisciplinary graduate centre that will
offer up to eight fellowships a year to
students in a range of disciplines,
including law, criminology, sociology,
economics and political science. Along with
professors from across the university,
students will investigate ways to improve
the efforts of governments, police forces
and private businesses to understand the
world of organized crime. According to Beare,
it is a world that increasingly crosses both
international borders--and the more nebulous
divide between underworld operations and
white collar activities. ``When the Russian
mafia first came to Canada, they relied on
violence,'' notes Beare. ``That is less true
now. Like any criminal group, it can
substitute corruption for violence, and
influence officials that way.''
For Nathanson, the centre reflects an
abiding interest in the complexities of
organized crime--and a fitting addition to a
career that has spanned the globe. A dropout
of St. Francis Xavier University in
Antigonish, N.S., Nathanson, who now lives
in the Bahamas with his wife, Maria, first
moved abroad in 1971. From a base in
England, he marketed consumer electronics
products across Europe. In 1983, he launched
a business selling intelligence equipment in
Africa. By the second half of the decade, he
had founded a gold mining company in Mali
whose discoveries include a deposit now
estimated to contain eight million ounces.
Today, International African Mining Gold
Corporation, known as IAMGOLD, is exploring
fields in three South American countries,
and is involved in joint ventures exploring
others in five African states.
In 1990, working with former RCMP assistant
commissioner Stamler, Nathanson established
International FIA Holdings Ltd. (the acronym
stands for Forensic Investigative
Associates). Acting, in the words of Stamler,
``almost like a private Interpol,'' it
searches out embezzlers and other white
collar criminals, and traces and recovers
stolen assets.
Then, in 1995, Nathanson and Stamler started
kicking around another idea: establishing an
academic centre that could link experts, and
develop further knowledge, in the shady
world of which they were fast becoming
hands-on experts. York, they decided, was a
natural choice. Nathanson admired York's
accomplishments in business, sociology,
ethics and law. ``For me,'' he says, ``Osgoode
Hall represents Canadian law.'' For York,
Nathanson's gift will create unique
opportunities to blend those disciplines,
and to consolidate several existing
specialties. ``We'll be drawing on Osgoode's
strengths in criminal law, banking law and
policing,'' explains Pilkington. The centre
may also work on international legal
assistance treaties and run programs on such
topics as the growth of criminal activity on
the Internet. Before long, says Pilkington,
the centre plans to be drafting laws to
respond to the problems of globalized
criminal activity. As the centre makes
its mark on the world of crime, the man who
has made it possible says he has no
intention of putting his own stamp on its
future direction. ``All I asked for was the
name, to honor my parents,'' says Nathanson.
``I don't want any say in the programs.''
But before getting back to the business of
running the international empire he has
quietly created, one of Canada's most
private tycoons will be very publicly
toasted at the program's launch this week.
There, police officers from Canada, the
United States and Europe will take part in
the centre's first symposium--a panel
discussion on organized crime--and pay
tribute to a one-time aspiring policeman who
is now fighting crime his own way. |
