Disgraced trend mogul Peter Nygard launched a $15 million smear marketing campaign in opposition to his billionaire neighbor within the Bahamas – together with portraying him as a member of the Ku Klux Klan – that led to a record $203 million awarded in damages against the accused pedophile, in accordance with particulars from the bombshell ruling.
The Canadian-born playboy – who’s cooling his heels in a Toronto jail as he awaits trial on a number of prices of sexual assault and forcible confinement – was ordered to pay the biggest sum for a defamation case in New York State historical past final Thursday.
His practically decade-long authorized battle with hedge fund supervisor Louis Bacon started years earlier than over a shared driveway close to a seaside within the Bahamas that was made well-known in James Bond’s “Thunderball.”
It escalated with Bacon submitting swimsuit in 2015 after the wild-haired Nygard accused the founding father of New York-based Moore Capital Administration of being all the pieces from a white supremacist to an insider dealer, according to court records reviewed by Financial Times that were published Monday.
The New York choose dominated Nygard, 81, unfold “malicious falsehoods” about Bacon by hiring greater than two dozen individuals for the $15 million smear marketing campaign.
It included TV and radio advertisements, web sites, doctored movies, and even paying protesters to reveal within the Bahamas and accuse Bacon of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, courtroom information present.
Bacon’s attorneys additionally alleged that Nygard had urged the editor of 1 Bahamas publication to run a doctored model of a Monetary Occasions headline linking him to insider buying and selling.
Different smears implicated the hedge fund supervisor in arson, after a harmful 2009 fireplace at Nygard’s lair on the Lyford Cay gated neighborhood, and even in homicide, following the loss of life in 2010 of Bacon’s home supervisor, FT reported.
In whole, Bacon filed 11 defamation lawsuits in opposition to Nygard and his associates.
Bacon, who now lives within the UK, informed the courtroom he had spent greater than $53 million on authorized and investigative work to counteract Nygard’s marketing campaign, FT reported.
Nygard, the founder of girls’s trend firm Nygard Worldwide, couldn’t be reached for remark whereas he stays in jail.
Along with his companies in chapter, it’s unclear whether or not Bacon will obtain a penny of the file damages award.
Nygard was identified to host “pamper events” on the palatial 6-acre Bahamas property, dubbed by associates as “Disneyland on steroids,” the place teenage ladies and younger ladies engaged in “karaoke and dancing and massaging,” in accordance with the lawsuit introduced by Bacon.
He has fathered at least 10 children with eight different women and once dated the late Anna Nicole Smith.
He lived in a bachelor palace that he known as “the Eighth Marvel of the World” and which included a pretend Mayan temple, sculptures of smoke-breathing snakes, and a disco with a stripper pole, in accordance with The New York Times.
To maintain his youthful look, Nygard allegedly injected himself with stem cells and testosterone, and took some 50 capsules per day in an effort to keep away from ageing.
Nygard was first arrested in Winnipeg in 2020 underneath the Extradition Act after being charged with 9 sex-related counts in New York.
Authorities within the US allege he used his place within the trend trade to lure ladies and underage ladies.
The extradition request from the US laid out allegations from seven complainants who’re anticipated to testify at his trials in Canada, where he not only faces charges in Toronto but also Montreal.
The complainants allege they had been coerced into having intercourse with Nygard via monetary means or bodily drive.
Nygard, who has denied the allegations via his lawyer, had agreed to be extradited to the US to face a cost of intercourse trafficking.
He is because of face trial in Toronto in September.
In a separate federal lawsuit filed in New York in 2020, Nygard is also alleged to have lured teenage ladies to his property, the place he plied them with alcohol and medicines, gave them free massages, and had them take horseback rides, The Times reported.
His private assistants offered the outlet with an “invite checklist” of greater than 700 ladies and younger ladies.
Jessica Alba, the actress who was as soon as invited to a celebration on Nygard’s property in 2004, informed The Occasions that she witnessed 14-year-old ladies within the Jacuzzi “taking off their garments.”
Nygard additionally faces a class-action lawsuit within the US involving 57 ladies with comparable allegations.
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