Hedge fund boss Louis Bacon wins $300 million defamation payout from Peter Nygard

Billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Bacon has secured a mammoth $300 million defamation payout from Peter Nygard.

Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard launched a $22 million (US$15 million) smear campaign against his billionaire neighbour in the Bahamas – including portraying him as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a US court has held.

A bombshell defamation ruling has led to a record $300 million (US$203) million award of damages against the accused paedophile.

The Canadian-born playboy – who is cooling his heels in a Toronto jail as he awaits trial on multiple charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement – was ordered to pay the largest sum for a defamation case in New York State history last Thursday, the New York Post reports.

His nearly decade-long legal battle with hedge fund manager Louis Bacon began years before over a shared driveway near a beach in the Bahamas that was made famous in James Bond’s “Thunderball.”

Peter Nygard, 80, the Canadian fashion mogul, is currently awaiting trial on charges of sexual assault. Picture: Mintaha Neslihan Eroglu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

It escalated with Mr Bacon filing a suit in 2015 after the wild-haired Mr Nygard accused the founder of New York-based Moore Capital Management of being everything from a white supremacist to an insider trader, according to court records reviewed by Financial Times that were published Monday.

The New York judge ruled Mr Nygard, 81, spread “malicious falsehoods” about Mr Bacon by hiring more than two dozen people for the AU$22 million smear campaign.

It included TV and radio ads, websites, doctored videos, and even paying protesters to demonstrate in the Bahamas and accuse Mr Bacon of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, court records show.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Bacon (pictured) was awarded $203 million after suing retail mogul Peter Nygard for defamation. Picture: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Mr Bacon’s lawyers also alleged that Mr Nygard had urged the editor of one Bahamas publication to run a doctored version of a Financial Times headline linking him to insider trading.

Other smears implicated the hedge fund manager in arson, after a destructive 2009 fire at Mr Nygard’s lair at the Lyford Cay gated community, and even in murder, following the death in 2010 of Mr Bacon’s house manager.

In total, Mr Bacon filed 11 defamation lawsuits against Mr Nygard and his associates.

Mr Bacon, who now lives in the UK, told the court he had spent more than $78 million (US$53 million) on legal and investigative work to counteract Mr Nygard’s campaign.

Mr Nygard, the founder of women’s fashion company Nygard International, could not be reached for comment while he remains in jail.

With his businesses in bankruptcy, it is unclear whether Mr Bacon will receive a penny of the record damages award.

Nygard allegedly injected himself with stem cells to try and look youthful. Picture: Chad Buchanan / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

Mr Nygard was known to host “pamper parties” at the palatial 6-acre Bahamas property, dubbed by friends as “Disneyland on steroids,” where teenage girls and young women engaged in “karaoke and dancing and massaging,” according to the lawsuit brought by Mr 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 called “the Eighth Wonder of the World” and which included a fake Mayan temple, sculptures of smoke-breathing snakes, and a disco with a stripper pole, according to The New York Times.

To keep his youthful appearance, Mr Nygard allegedly injected himself with stem cells and testosterone, and took some 50 pills per day in an effort to avoid ageing.

Mr Nygard was first arrested in Winnipeg in 2020 under the Extradition Act after being charged with nine sex-related counts in New York.

The two men own property on the island. Picture: New York Post composite

Authorities in the US allege he used his position in the fashion industry to lure women and underage girls.

The extradition request from the US laid out allegations from seven complainants who are expected to testify at his trials in Canada, where he not only faces charges in Toronto but also Montreal.

The complainants allege they were coerced into having sex with Mr Nygard through financial means or physical force.

Mr Nygard, who has denied the allegations through his lawyer, had agreed to be extradited to the US to face a charge of sex trafficking.

He is due to face trial in Toronto in September.

In a separate federal lawsuit filed in New York in 2020, Mr Nygard also is alleged to have lured teenage girls to his estate, where he plied them with alcohol and drugs, gave them free massages, and had them take horseback rides, The Times reported.

His personal assistants provided the outlet with an “invite list” of more than 700 women and young girls.

Jessica Alba, the actress who was once invited to a party on Mr Nygard’s estate in 2004, told The Times that she witnessed 14-year-old girls in the Jacuzzi “taking off their clothes.”

Mr Nygard also faces a class-action lawsuit in the US involving 57 women with similar allegations.

This story was published by the New York Post and reproduced with permission

Originally published as Hedge fund boss Louis Bacon wins $300 million defamation payout from Peter Nygard