Influential Canadian-born businessman Edgar Bronfman Sr has died.

He was 84.

The CEO of the family’s Seagram’s liquor empire died at his home in New York.

Born in Montreal in 1929, Bronfman became a U.S. citizen in 1959.

 

He led the World Jewish Congress in the 1980s, when the WJC lobbied the Soviets to permit Jews to emigrate and helped spearhead the search for hidden Nazi loot.

Bronfman was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 1999.