Bob Weinstein personally paid £250,000 to settle two employees’ sexual misconduct claims against his brother, Harvey Weinstein, during their time at Miramax nearly two decades ago, according to a new report by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker.
Bob Weinstein used his personal bank account to settle claims by two employees in Miramax’s London office who accused the elder Weinstein brother of sexual harassment and assault, the magazine wrote.
The amount would equal about $600,000 today — or $400,000 at the time, according to 1998 exchange rates.
The use of Bob Weinstein’s personal account helped hide the payment from executives at Miramax and its then-parent company Disney, the New Yorker suggested.
Zelda Perkins, Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant, was one of the women who received the settlement. According to the New Yorker story, Perkins hired an assistant of her own in 1998 and warned candidates for the job about Weinstein’s behavior.
Perkins told the magazine that she hired one woman after rejecting “very overtly attractive” applicants, but that the new assistant emerged from her first meeting with Harvey Weinstein during the Venice Film Festival saying that he had sexually assaulted her. When Perkins confronted him, she said that he lied.
Perkins and the assistant — whose identity has not been disclosed — resigned and sent notice of legal action, the magazine wrote. Perkins said her lawyers at the time told her it would be “too late” to notify the police and alerting Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney, wouldn’t work because “they don’t give a s—.” Her attorneys told her that anything but a settlement was a “nonstarter,” she said.
Ultimately, the attorneys agreed on a £250,000 settlement. Perkins had no idea the money came from Bob Weinstein’s personal bank account, the report said.
Many former employees believe that Bob Weinstein must have been aware of Harvey Weinstein’s misconduct. Last month, “The Mist” showrunner Amanda Segel accused Bob Weinstein of harassment. He denied the allegations and questioned whether the claim even constituted harassment.
The New Yorker story said that Bob Weinstein acknowledged the payment from his personal bank account but added that his brother had misled him regarding the reason behind it.
“Regarding that payment, I only know what Harvey told me, and basically what he said was he was fooling around with two women and they were asking for money,” Bob Weinstein told the magazine. “And he didn’t want his wife to find out, so he asked me if I could write a check, and so I did, but there was nothing to indicate any kind of sexual harassment.”
A spokesperson for Bob Weinstein has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.