Billionaires’ brawling ensnares NY Times
AS
if The New York Times doesn’t have enough problems on its hands, it’s now being drawn into the bitter decade-long fight between billionaires Peter
Nygard and Louis Bacon, which started out as a land dispute in the Bahamas.
Nygard, a retail tycoon, filed a lawsuit earlier this month accusing Bacon, a hedge fund billionaire, of trying to bring him down via a wide variety of tactics — including attempted entrapment in a murder-for-hire scheme and the alleged bribing and intimidation of witnesses.
The Manhattan federal lawsuit accuses Bacon of an unsuccessful bid to get federal prosecutors to go after Nygard and says the Moore Capital Management founder is now trying to get the press to go after him — specifically fingering The New York Times.
“Having failed to convince the US Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to work with them to complete their desired result of destroying plaintiffs, defendants have now turned their attention to attempting to improperly influence and providing false information to a prominent New York newspaper to assist them in their quest,” said the lawsuit, referring to plaintiffs Nygard, Nygard International Partnership and Nygard Inc. The defendants include Bacon and “John Does 1-20 and Doe Corps 1-10.”
The Times is not named as a defendant, but the suit does give the address of the “major New York newspaper” as 620 Eighth Ave. — which is the Gray Lady’s headquarters. The suit claims that the reporters for the paper “tried to steer the individuals to provide information to fit a story” and that reporters wanted to “bring down” Nygard.
Nygard, a self-proclaimed hedonist, was famous for throwing wild parties with plenty of young women on his estate in the Bahamas, where his feud with Bacon, who owned an adjoining estate, first erupted a decade ago over the property boundary.
In addition to the NY Times, Nygard points to a 2010 Canadian Broadcasting segment that included witnesses who gave “false statements” saying Nygard forced himself sexually on a woman.
Nygard’s attorneys said that the woman prior to the broadcast “averred that such activities never took place and statements made about her were untrue.” The suit, filed by lawyers David
Ross and Cynthia Butera on Sept. 6, goes on to claim that Bacon is running “a private witness protection program” in the US for at least five people who claim to have dirt on Nygard. The individuals in the “private witness protection program” are giving false and misleading statements, the suit said.
Nygard’s suit also claims that Bacon’s associates have hired two enforcers — Bahamian residents known as Wisler “Bobo” Davilma and Livingston “Toggi”
Bullard — to threaten witnesses who allegedly tried to set up Nygard in a murder-for-hire scheme.
Bacon attorneys Christopher
Egleson and Nancy Chung asked the court in a Sept. 16 memo to dismiss Nygard’s complaint.
A spokesman for Louis Bacon told Media Ink: “This filing is a move straight out of Nygard’s litigation playbook, like numerous others where he uses court documents to make outlandish, false claims. He tried this approach two years ago in a similar RICO case that was dismissed. The new filing is loaded with irrelevant and shopworn allegations designed to muddy the waters and divert attention from the fact that, like all Nygard’s other lawsuits, all of which he lost or withdrew, the new RICO case is baseless.”
The Times did not return e-mails seeking comment by press time. Aw, hex
Rose McGowan, who played a witch in the supernatural TV series “Charmed” on the WB Network, is writing the foreword for “Pop Magick: A Simple Guide to Bending Your Reality,” which explores the real-life world of witchcraft as practiced by its 24-year-old author, Alex Kazemi.
“Magick is the art of utilizing natural forces around us to bring about change,” McGowan writes. “I stand for change. That’s what this book does. It brings change — change of thought, change of action, change of spirit.”
“The book debunks magick/ witchcraft’s association with selling your soul to the devil or casting spells on people,” said Kazemi, whose day job is running the creative agency Void Collective. “It’s about self-love, selfpreservation, helping others, through magick.” Kazemi scored a midfive-figure advance.
“This is a subject that has been bubbling up in this generation for the past few years,” said Jacob Hoye, the creative director of publisher Permuted Press, an imprint that was acquired by Post Hill Press, headed by Anthony Ziccardi, the former editorial director of Simon & Schuster conservative imprint Threshold Press. “It’s a lot for an independent publisher and a firsttime author.” Hoye noted that plans are for a 25,000 first printing in February.