Micheline Charest, 51; Firm She Co-Founded Won Emmys Before Scandal Led to Losses

Micheline Charest, co-founder of Canada’s award-winning but scandal-plagued children’s television producer Cinar Corp., died Wednesday at a Montreal hospital of complications from plastic surgery. She was 51.

Charest’s death came a day after she was rushed to the emergency ward from a nearby plastic surgery clinic, where she had undergone procedures that a former colleague described as routine. An autopsy was performed Thursday, but the results were not immediately released.

“The end of Micheline Charest is as tragic as the end of Cinar,” said Louise Sansregret, a vice president of the company from 1998 to 2002. Charest co-founded Cinar with her husband, Ronald Weinberg, in 1976. Under their leadership, the Montreal-based firm became an entertainment powerhouse in children’s television. Its hits included Emmy Award-winning “Arthur” and “Zoboomafoo,” top-rated “Wimzie’s House,” “Caillou” and “The Adventures of Paddington Bear.”

In 1997, the Hollywood Reporter ranked the blunt-spoken Charest as the 19th most powerful woman in the U.S. entertainment industry, ahead of talk show host Rosie O’Donnell and singer Madonna.

Cinar was then a stock market darling, worth more than $1 billion. But the financial fairy tale was about to turn into an investor’s nightmare.

The company came under investigation in 1999 over allegations that it fraudulently obtained Canadian tax credits by listing Canadians as authors of productions actually written by U.S. citizens.

Cinar’s board ousted Charest and Weinberg six months later, after discovering that $122 million had been funneled without board authorization to a Bahamian investment firm.

Cinar stock crashed before being delisted from Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange, and disgruntled shareholders launched a flurry of class-action lawsuits. Cinar sued Charest and Weinberg, and the couple counter-sued.

Stymied by the scandal, Cinar saw its prospects for lining up new hit programs quickly dwindle, pushing the company into deep losses. The Canadian government stopped the flow of public funds to Cinar, and morale within the company’s creative production staff sank.

In 2002, Charest and Weinberg were each fined $750,000 by the Quebec Securities Commission but they never admitted any guilt. Police investigations wound down without criminal charges being filed.

Cinar was sold in February to a group of Toronto-based investors for $144 million. Charest and Weinberg pocketed $18 million on the sale.

“Micheline was glad that it was sold to people with know-how in the entertainment industry,” Sansregret said. “She had turned the page and was ready to get on with life.”

Many lawsuits sparked by the scandal remain outstanding, including those between Cinar and its founders.

“Nothing has changed with Charest’s death,” said Cinar spokesman Alex Radmanovich.

According to Canadian Press, the complications that led to Charest’s death arose after she had a face lift, liposuction and breast reduction. It quoted Weinberg as saying his wife had been in good health.

He survives her, along with their sons, Alex and Eric.

Charest, who was born in London and raised in Quebec City, met Weinberg in the early 1970s when she was a London Film School graduate working for the National Film Board of Canada and he was running a film festival in New Orleans.

Their first venture after forming Cinar was marketing an obscure horror film, “The Wicker Man,” literally from the trunk of their car as they drove across the country to show it to local exhibitors. The movie was screened in about 30 small art houses, and made the couple about $250,000 over two years.

They wanted to be filmmakers, but wound up concentrating on animated programs after becoming parents and recognizing the need for an alternative to the violent content of many children’s shows.

Within a decade of its founding, Cinar had become one of North America’s top creators and distributors of children’s entertainment.