Peter Nygard contends his Bahamian neighbour conspired with others to damage his reputation and force him off the Caribbean island he calls home.
And he used the CBC to try to do it.
In a civil suit filed April 16 in the Bahamas, Nygard claims his neighbour, Louis Bacon, was the ringleader of a conspiracy to wrestle away ownership of the fashion designer’s six-acre property in the posh Lyford Cay neighbourhood and have his permanent residency revoked.
To do so, Nygard alleges Bacon was willing to pay women up to $10,000 to appear on camera for a CBC documentary about Nygard and fabricate stories of misconduct.
A direct criminal prosecution against Bacon and others was immediately thrown out by that country’s attorney general, but a parallel civil suit making the same extortion claims continues.
“I believe this scandalous procurement of false evidence by Bacon operatives could result in the laying of criminal charges against me by the Lyford Cay police for any number of criminal charges under Bahamian law,” Nygard stated in court documents. “This will then form the basis for another malicious, false and defamatory CBC episode about me.”
Much of the evidence Nygard is using in these cases comes from Alick Morrison, a retired Scotland Yard detective he hired shortly after the documentary aired to go undercover in the Bahamas and infiltrate the alleged group of conspirators.
