Peter Nygard — Longtime Nemesis of Louis Bacon — Has Been Charged With Sex Trafficking

Peter Nygard, the Canadian fashion magnate best known in hedge fund circles for his bitter feud with Moore Capital Management founder Louis Bacon, was arrested in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Tuesday on racketeering, sex trafficking, and related charges.

U.S. federal prosecutors accused Nygard, 79, of using “force, fraud, and coercion to cause women and minors to have sex” with him, friends and business associates, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan. The accusations involve dozens of victims in the United States, the Bahamas, and Canada, among other locations, and date back to 1995. Nygard frequently targeted women and minor-aged girls who came from disadvantaged economic backgrounds or who had a history of abuse, the government alleged.

“他通过威胁，模拟机会和其他职业发展，财政支持以及其他强制手段的虚假承诺控制了他的受害者，包括不断监测，对运动的限制和身体隔离，”在一份声明中表示。在某些情况下，政府声称，妇女被殴打或吸毒。

The arrest caps a bitter, years-long feud between Nygard and Bacon — his neighbor in an exclusive enclave of the Bahamas — that resulted in dozens of lawsuits, millions of dollars of legal fees, and outlandish accusations.

A spokesman for Nygard did not return a call seeking comment. Bacon declined to comment through a spokesman.

根据Bahamas Tripune的早期报告，培根与Nygard最初以保护问题和噪音投诉为中心，并指责Nygard爆炸嘈杂的音乐和他的财产爆炸音乐和其他噪音污染。

But then things escalated. In 2010 armed plainclothes police officers entered Bacon’s home looking for lethal “ultrasonic weaponry,” according to a report. Bacon was not home at the time, but the police reportedly handcuffed and body-searched household staff for over three hours, before confiscating a set of industrial loudspeakers that were returned later that day. The loudspeakers were being used to send piercing, annoying sound waves to Nygard’s property. The fight grew more acrimonious and the accusations more salacious, according to a lengthy 2015Vanity Fairstory about the saga.

Then in 2018亚博赞助欧冠reported that the Supreme Court of the Bahamas扣押尼吉达的财产after Save the Bays, a local nonprofit that seeks to protect the environment, won a legal victory. The Bahamian non-profit, which received funding from Bacon, had sued Nygard in 2013 for illegal dredging.

The dredging, which was part of the expansion of Nygard’s property, disrupted the natural flow of sand to a national park and left Nygard’s neighbors’ shorefronts in increasingly rocky condition, all while his own property became sandier, according to Fred Smith, an attorney at Callenders & Co. who represented Save the Bays. Bacon was a director of Save the Bays and was among the property owners allegedly harmed by Nygard's construction activities.

In January 2019 a Bahamas judge issued a warrant for Nygard’s arrest for failing to appear in court on multiple occasions for a sentencing hearing related to two contempt of court convictions, after Nygard was found repeatedly ignoring a 2013 injunction that banned him from dredging, according to Canada’sNational Post报纸。

Nygard was eventually sentenced to 90 days in jail and fined $150,000. But Nygard, who remained in Canada, told the Supreme Court of the Bahamas he was too ill to travel, according to aseparate report由这件事National Post.

今年早些时候,培根Nyg的指控ard turned more serious. According to a纽约时报story in February, “Lawyers and investigators funded in part by Mr. Bacon claim that Mr. Nygard raped teenage girls in the Bahamas.” That month, lawyers filed a federal suit in New York on behalf of ten women who accused Nygard of sexual assault, the Times reported. Bacon’s associates spent two years finding women to bring claims against the fashion mogul, according to the Times report.

The article pointed out that Bacon and Nygard’s combined wealth was close to the annual budget of the Bahamian government.