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Doctored vid used to trash: billionaire

The battle of the Bahamian billionaires may now include a smoking-gun video.

Hedge fund titan Louis Bacon — who has been battling his Lyford Cay neighbor Peter Nygard over defamation claims for the better part of a decade — said in recently filed court papers that a 5:43minute video of the apparel magnate discussing a doctored video is a “smoking gun” that proves his case.

“We were gonna go further, but we’re not sure how far to take it,” an offscreen voice tells Nygard in the video, which was attached to Bacon’s appeal in his $50 million defamation case against Nygard.

“That’s not far,” Nygard responds. Moments later, the owner of Nygard Fashions, a women’s apparel and accessories brand, calls the doctored footage of Bacon “good stuff.”

When an off-screen voice admits that “it’s pretty dirty,” Nygard agrees: “Pretty dirty.”

In the court-filed video, the allegedly fabricated clips cannot be seen but can clearly be heard. The doctored clips portray Bacon as a member of the KKK and as someone charged with in- sider trading, Bacon claims in court papers.

The original footage was from a CBS News report about the arrest of former McKinsey Managing Director Rajat Gupta (who was convicted of insider trading), court papers allege. Images of Bacon replaced those of Gupta, it is alleged.

Similarly, an ABC News report, “Inside the New Ku Klux Klan,” was doctored to show footage of Bacon’s Moore Capital. When correspondent Cynthia McFadden ends her lead-in with, “It may surprise you who’s among their ranks,” images of Bacon’s business were edited in, court papers allege.

The spat between the billionaires started almost innocently as a property dispute, including a disagreement over development rights for their abutting Bahamian estates.

The $50 million defamation suit against Nygard was tossed by a Manhattan judge last month on grounds that the Bahamian court system offers a better forum for trying what Bacon has alleged is “a harassment campaign against him.”

A spokesman for Nygard said the fashion mogul did not know he was being videotaped while watching and commenting on the allegedly fabricated news clips.

The spokesman also noted that a New York judge previously excluded the two clips as evidence.

“Nygard did not put together these tapes, create or direct the content shown or post them,” his spokesman said of the clips.

A spokesman for Bacon had no comment.