Nygard’s former neighbour wins decade-old defamation suit against convicted sex offender

Convicted sex offender Peter Nygard’s billionaire former neighbour in the Bahamas has won his defamation lawsuit in New York that alleged the disgraced fashion mogul spread lies about him.

Louis Bacon, a hedge fund manager, filed the lawsuit against the 84-year-old Nygard a decade ago amid a long-running feud between the two over issues around their adjacent properties in the Caribbean country.

In a written decision Monday, New York Supreme Court Justice Richard Latin said Nygard admitted he had no evidence to back up salacious claims made about Bacon, which included that Bacon “murdered” multiple people, that he was a white supremacist and member of the Ku Klux Klan and that he trafficked narcotics, among many others.

Bacon, who founded Moore Capital Management, called Nygard’s claims “outrageous lies” in his lawsuit.

Bacon’s lawyers had sought an order for summary judgment against Nygard, which Latin granted.

“In Mr. Nygard’s deposition, Mr. Nygard openly admitted and failed to provide evidence to defend the alleged defamatory statements,” wrote Latin.

“Moreover, Mr. Nygard failed to provide any evidence whether the statements made by Mr. Nygard had any truth.”

The two men were neighbours in a ritzy gated community in the Bahamas. Their feud began as Nygard sought to expand his property, which Bacon opposed.

Bacon accused Nygard of orchestrating a smear campaign to link him to illegal activities.

Neither of the former neighbours’ lawyers immediately returned requests for comment sent by the Free Press midday Wednesday. Nygard’s lawyer, Peter Sverd, told news service Thomson Reuters that he expects to appeal the decision.

Nygard, who once had a net worth in the hundreds of millions, is serving an 11-year sentence in an Ontario prison after he was convicted in September 2024 of sexually assaulting four women at his Toronto corporate headquarters from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s.

He still faces charges in Quebec and extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering.

Nygard had sex charges against him stayed in Manitoba provincial court in October, after the judge ruled his right to a fair trial had been breached because of lost evidence.

He had been accused of sexually assaulting and forcibly confining a woman, who was then 20, at his former corporate headquarters in Winnipeg in 1993.

Those allegations were investigated by the Winnipeg Police Service, but Manitoba Crown prosecutors declined to lay charges based on that probe. That prompted Kelvin Goertzen, then Manitoba’s attorney general, to seek a second opinion on the case from Saskatchewan prosecutors, who authorized charges.

Nygard was named in a recently released document from the so-called Epstein files.

The U.S. Justice Department released a letter Tuesday revealing the FBI and New York prosecutors’ attempt to interview disgraced former British prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in separate criminal investigations into Nygard and infamous pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca