Bahamian resident and international fashion mogul, Peter Nygard, has been taking some heat recently, with some suggesting that certain people are attempting to “force” him to leave the country.
For those who don’t keep up on the Lyford Cay crowd, a Bahamian pastime akin to royal-watching in Britian, Mr Nygard has been embroiled in a rather public dispute with his Lyford Cay neighbor, financier Louis Bacon.
The situation came to a head in early August when Bahamian police raided Mr Bacon’s house and confiscated a pair of heavy duty speakers allegedly being used as “ultrasonic weaponry”. Rumours surfaced that the military grade speakers were imported illegally or duty-free – allegations which turned out to be baseless.
The speakers were returned only hours later with Mr Bacon’s Bahamian attorney explained that they were used to deflect sound from Mr Nygard’s wild parties back to its source.
Mr Nygard’s infamous parties are perhaps the biggest reason for the dispute between the two affluent neighbors.
With music blaring at ear-splitting levels from early afternoon to sunrise the next morning, and hundreds of people attending, it is not difficult to understand that the neighbors in the quiet residential enclave might not be pleased.
Nygard, a multi-millionaire, fired round two by filing a lawsuit against his billionaire neighbor regarding access to an easement on their properties in the exclusive development at the western tip of New Providence.
Separate from this dispute, the Bahamas government issued a directive, from the Office of The Prime Minister, ordering Mr Nygard to remove structures erected on unauthorised land formed over the seabed.
For several years, Mr Nygard had been expanding the land he originally purchased by engaging in construction activities, only some of which had been authorised by the government.
Lyford Cay residents, many who resent Mr Nygard because of his notorious parties and his refusal to pay dues to their property association, had allegedly been complaning of his construction activites for years.
Suddenly, this all became a public issue and the government, usually asleep at the wheel on such issues, wanted it to stop.
Coincidence? Some thought not.
Hence the rumours that Mr Nygard was being “forced” out of the country.
Meanwhile, Sherman Brown, a ZNS reporter, was suspended from the government-owned broadcasting company for moonlighting. Brown was accused of attempting to repair Mr Nygard’s public image by acting as a PR agent on behalf of Mr Nygard in offering a substantial donation to the Bahamas National Trust.
The donation was refused with BNT Executive Director Eric Carey saying the Trust was aware of “some issues taking place with Mr Nygard,” but “was not prepared to enter the discussion in that fashion with Mr Nygard.”
This, of course, made Mr Nygard appear all the more “undesirable” and seemed to support the rumours of his being painted as the “bad guy” and given the cold shoulder.
With the governmnent on his back and his once welcome donations being rejected, Mr Nygard’s woes compounded when, in late August, Louis Bacon responded to Mr Nygard’s lawsuit by filing a counterclaim, accusing Nygard of encroaching on Bacon’s property to carry out unauthorised construction and further the “unlawful” use of Nygard Cay as a resort or hotel.
Mr Bacon also asked the court for an injunction barring Mr Nygard from traversing his property, alleging that over the past five years Mr Nygard has committed various acts of encroachment on Mr Bacon’s property.
Now, the winds appears to be shifting away from Mr Nygard and towards his nemesis.
The Mail Online, the website for the Daily Mail, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, yesterday published a rather unflattering article depicting Mr Nygard’s foe, Louis Bacon, as some kind of a disreputable hedge fund godfather.
The article reports that Bacon’s hedge fund, “is embroiled in two separate financial scandals involving allegations of insider trading in London and market manipulation in New York, which has already resulted in a £16 million fine in the U.S.”
It also mentions the bizarre incident that occurred in May, prior to any of this coming into the pubic view, when a naked dead man was found floating in Mr Bacon’s hot tub.
54-year-old Dan Tuckfield, Mr Bacon’s property manager, was found floating naked and face down in a pool at Mr Bacon’s luxury home in Lyford Cay.
Oddly, Bahamian police allegedly failed to report the mysterious death of the American man who had lived in The Bahamas for 20 years.
Tuckfield was inexplicably and perhaps illegally autopsied, cremated and flown out of the country in record time, two days after being found dead. Normally, accidental deaths in The Bahamas are investigated more thoroughly by police or put before a Coroner’s Court.
Immediately, the rumour mill began grinding. Among the more sensational rumours were: allegations that Tuckfield died from a drug overdose; that Tuckfield ran drugs in and out of Lyford Cay using one of Bacon’s boats; and that agents representing a foreign country were here in Nassau carrying out a sting operation and were about to nab Tuckfield for his alleged activities.
There was speculation that Tuckfield was killed, and someone allegedly paid off his daughter to hush the crime. And that a Bahamian law officer may have been involved to conceal the crime from exploding into the public domain.
None of these rumours were supported by any kind of evidence and nothing more was heard about the situation.
But the article in the Mail Online sheds some new and, most likely, unwanted light on Mr Nygard’s foe and appears to have taken Mr Nygard out of the spotlight, at least for now.
Even the Bahamas Press blog, which was publishing rather serious allegations against Mr Nygard’s character has done an about-face, now featuring every salacious item of news that can be found on Mr Bacon.
Of course, Mr Nygard’s threat of a lawsuit and his attorney’s demands that the slanderous articles be removed may have had something to do with that.
