‘BLACK’ DAY FOR MOGULS
Collateral damage?
LEON Black may be gearing up to drag some of his fellow billionaires into his messy legal battle with a woman who has accused him of rape — including Mort Zuckerman, the real-estate developer behind US News & World Report, The Post has learned.
Russian model Guzel Ganieva has publicly accused Black, the former head of Apollo Global Management, of paying her to sign a nondisclosure agreement in 2015 tied to her sexual-assault and abuse allegations against him.
Black has countered that she signed the NDA in exchange for $21 million to keep quiet about their six-year consensual affair.
In seeking to prove that he was the victim, Black on Monday filed a 52-page countersuit against Ganieva that points to recordings he claims he compiled of Ganieva’s sometimes “paranoid” explanations for why she should be paid to quietly walk away from the affair.
His suit alleges one recording had Ganieva complaining that “several billionaires” were “threatening her” and “might be involved in a ‘conspiracy’ against her,” including a reference that The Post has confirmed is to Zuckerman, bought US News & World Report in 1984.
“Ganieva also claimed that one of those billionaires, who had given her a job as a writer for his publication, was ‘making fun’ of her and also had threatened to fire her unless she slept with him,” according to Black’s Manhattan state court lawsuit.
A source close to the situation said the billionaire publisher referenced is Zuckerman, who is now in failing health but still owns the magazine even after selling the New York Daily News in 2017.
Ganieva’s byline is indeed attached to two articles for US News & World Report in 2014, including a May story on ObamaCare headlined “Obamacare Enrollees, By the Numbers,” and an April story on climate change.
No other news articles were uncovered under Ganieva’s byline for that or any other publication.
Eric Gertler, a Zuckerman relative who speaks for him, referred questions to US News & World Report spokeswoman Maria Santucci, who said, “These allegations are baseless and designed to deflect attention from a litigant’s own actions.”
Some lawyers speculated that Black is sending a signal to powerful pals who may have had ties to Ganieva — welcome or not — that they better help shut her up or they could all suffer.
The reference “is to let others know that they are going to get dragged into this and they may want to put pressure on her to drop the case,” opined Stephen Bourtin of the Boyd Law Group, which has worked for sexual-harassment victims and defendants alike.
“As long as they are doing it this way, it is not witnesstampering,” Bourtin said. “They didn’t name him, although they came close.”