‘At pamper parties Nygard would select women he’d pay for sex’

Nygard invited [her] to a “club” without informing her of the full nature of the club. Nygard took [her] to a “swingers club” and instructed her to have sex with an individual so Nygard could trade and have sex with the individual’s partner,’ it claims.

He then supposedly took her to Fort Lauderdale in Florida ‘and continued to have sex with [her] while she was a minor’.

‘Jane Doe’ is suing for damages on nine counts, including battery, sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, harassment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Her lawyers are also demanding a jury trial.

Again, Nygard has yet to submit a formal response and, like any defendant in a case that has yet to be tested in court, should be considered innocent until proven otherwise.

The businessman, who grew up in relative poverty, certainly has a compelling rags-to-riches story. His empire controls several of Canada’s most successful womenswear brands and he travels in a private jet that has ‘Peter Nygard N-Force’ painted on the outside and reportedly features a stripper’s pole inside.

However, claims of impropriety (always vehemently denied and never proven) have frequently interrupted his trajectory.

In 1980, he was charged with raping an 18-year- old girl, only for charges to be dropped after she suddenly decided not to testify. He later alleged that the police had shown ‘poor judgment’ in investigating the case.

In the 1990s, three separate women who worked in his office filed sexual harassment complaints with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, which he settled. One, a 27-yearold travel co-ordinator, claimed she ‘ repeatedly brushed off Mr Nygard’s touches and sexual advances’ in the workplace.

Another, a 39-year-old communications manager, said that, when called into Nygard’s office, she would ‘find him in a state of undress (pants open, no shirt) or with his hands down the front of his pants, fondling himself’.

She also claimed he once added ‘naked swimming’ to the agenda of a business meeting and that, in the Bahamas, ‘frequently was grabbing himself (wearing a very small bathing suit)’.

AT the time, Mr Nygard’s lawyer claimed the women filed complaints in order to get better severance payments from the firm, saying it settled to avoid litigation costs.

He also faced a sexual harassment suit in 1996 from a Los Angeles employee who claimed that, against her wishes, ‘she spent the night in Peter Nygard’s bed and engaged in sexual intercourse with him’. She later rejected his advances, she claims, and was eventually fired.

This case was later dismissed.

Again, it is worth noting that none of the above incidents appear to have prevented Prince Andrew bringing his two daughters and ex-wife on that 2000 visit to Nygard Cay.

In 2008, another woman — a former girlfriend — filed a lawsuit against Nygard in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that he had slammed a bedroom door shut on her hand. Again, the case was settled and Nygard denies any wrongdoing.

Then, in 2010, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation put out a Panorama-style documentary about Nygard, focusing on alleged sex abuse and harassment of former employees.

It quoted a former stewardess on his private plane who alleged that on one journey — during which Nygard was accompanied by a troupe of topless women — he lost his temper with staff, shouting: ‘You are nothing! You are garbage! I am God!’

The programme also alleged that Nygard had engaged in ‘inappropriate sexual contact’ with a young woman who had been brought to his home in 2003 from the Dominican Republic.

Nygard vehemently denied that either incident had happened, and sued to stop the documentary being broadcast. When that failed, he filed a criminal complaint against the journalists who made it before suing CBC for defamation. Eight years later, that case is still wending its way through the Canadian court system.

But perhaps the most highprofile, and certainly the most bizarre legal tussle to involve Nygard, is a dispute with his next- door neighbour in the Bahamas, a New York hedge fund boss called Louis Bacon.

THIS started in the midNoughties as a somewhat petty dispute over car parking on an access road to their properties, along with noise from Nygard’s late- night parties, but has snowballed into an avalanche of litigation which has seen at least 18 lawsuits filed in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.

In 2016, Cherie Blair — who rarely seems to meet a foreign billionaire she won’t take paid work from — played a curious cameo in their battle. The Wall Street Journal revealed that her law firm, Omnia, had been hired to try to dig up dirt on Bacon.

She proceeded to contact a British former employee of Bacon’s hedge fund called Julian

Rifat, who had been jailed for insider dealing, with a view to persuading him to tell the U.S. authorities about alleged wrongdoing at Bacon’s firm. After several meetings, the plan seems to have been abandoned.

Hostilities between Nygard and Bacon reached a peak, of sorts, last January when a court in the Bahamas issued a warrant for Nygard’s arrest on contempt of court charges related to a case involving claims that Nygard illegally dredged sand from the sea floor to enlarge the size of his private beach.

He has been unable to visit the Bahamas since, and in November was sentenced to jail time in

absentia. A spokesman branded that decision ‘unfair, unreasonable and unnecessary’ and vowed to appeal.

In New York, meanwhile, lawyers for Nygard recently filed a lawsuit claiming Bacon was attempting to ‘bring down’ their client by persuading various women to provide the New York Times with ‘ false information’ regarding his conduct towards them. This is the only Nygard lawsuit against Bacon that has not been struck out or withdrawn.

Yesterday, Nygard’s attorneys were once more blaming Bacon for their woes, claiming that the latest ugly lawsuit stemmed from their seemingly endless battle and is ‘ just the latest in a tenplusstring of attempts to try to destroy the reputation of a man through false statements’.

Doubtless the American courts will eventually decide whether that claim holds merit. In the meantime, Prince Andrew, Cherie Blair and every celebrity who partied at the billionaire’s lavish mansion will surely be watching with bated breath.