Leonard Cohen heirs accuse former manager of forgery
The heirs to Leonard Cohen‘s estate have accused former manager Robert Kory of forgery of Cohen’s signed trust. The allegations include Kory having a page of Cohen’s signed trust removed in order to falsely state that he is the primary trustee. Cohen’s trust to date has been estimated at $48 million dollars.
In a recent story with Variety, Kory’s former attorney Revee Chudd mentions replacing the information, saying, “It was a horrible mistake on my part to create this document. There is no valid instrument by Leonard designating Kory to serve in that capacity. Since Leonard’s death in 2016, Kory has been holding himself out as trustee and exercising control over the trust and its assets solely on the basis of forgery and fraud”.
Kory’s position as primary trustee also allowed him to profit off of Cohen’s work. The legal motion reported also claims that Kory backdated documents so that he could profit from a planned exhibition of the late folk star’s various works at Art Gallery of Ontario. Kory then reported syphoned the profits from this exhibtion off as payment for him and his son under the proviso that they were using the funds to uphold Cohen’s archive.
Cohen’s surviving children Lorca and Adam have filed the motion against Kory, with their defence attorney Adam Streisand telling The New York Post, “Leonard Cohen’s lawyers and manager forged his trust so they could fleece the estate of millions of dollars and steal the Hall of Famer’s legacy from his own children”.
Cohen passed away in 2016 of complications while battling leukaemia. His final album You Want It Darker was released a few weeks before his death, and a posthumous album Thanks for the Dance was released in 2019.
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