How do you intimidate a billionaire? With violent threats, vandalism — and parades.
Canadian clothing magnate Peter Nygard organized a “hate rally” against billionaire Louis Bacon at a Bahamas parade on Jan. 1, with marchers waving signs that accused the hedge-fund tycoon of being a racist, court papers filed this week allege.
“A group of individuals wearing KKK hats paraded through the streets,” according to an amended complaint filed in Manhattan state court, “with placards bearing Mr. Bacon’s photograph and falsely stating that ‘Bacon is KKK’ (with images of a KKK cross burning).”
Protesters carried a massive banner reading, “The Coalition To Rid the Bahamas of Louis Moore Bacon!!!,” according to the suit.
Bacon, the founder of New York-based Moore Capital Management, has been locked in a bitter, decade-long property-line dispute with Nygard, his next-door neighbor in the posh Bahamas neighborhood of Lyford Cay.
Most of Nygard’s lavish estate was destroyed in a 2009 fire after years of complaints from Bacon about loud parties and illegal dredging that, Bacon claimed, threatened an environmental disaster.
This week, lawyers for Bacon alleged that Nygard has orchestrated press coverage in the Bahamas and elsewhere that accused Bacon of setting the fire — a charge Bacon denies.
“Mr. Bacon had absolutely no involvement in the fire at Nygard Cay,” Bacon’s lawyers wrote in the court papers, referring to the name given by Nygard to his beach compound.
Both deep-pocketed men have accused each other of trying to enlist the Bahamian government in their campaigns against each other.
Citing a YouTube video titled, “Nygard Takes Bahamas Back 2012,” following the prime minister’s election, Bacon charged that it was meant to “give the impression that Nygard could act with impunity in the Bahamas,” according to the suit.
Nygard’s alleged misconduct included a “mob riot” in which Nygard’s lawyer, Keod Smith, incited workers “carrying sticks and metal weapons” against Fred Smith, an environmental lawyer who had been allied with Bacon, the suit claims.
“One of the workers smashed the back windshield of Fred Smith’s car with a curved steel bar,” the suit alleged, recounting a video taken of the incident posted on YouTube. “Keod Smith then reached into Fred Smith’s vehicle to remove the curved bar — key evidence in the assault.”
Bacon likewise charges that Nygard has vandalized his own estate, including spray-painting and hanging signs saying “Nygard Cay” along the roadway to Bacon’s house.
In a statement, Nygard reps called Bacon’s legal salvo a ploy “to deflect media attention away from his real agenda, which is to unseat the ruling political party in the Bahamas so that his own candidate can take power and block reconstruction of Mr. Nygard’s residence.”