Peter Nygard locked out of his luxury home in bizarre Bahamas feud

Winnipeg-raised fashion mogul Peter Nygard found himself locked out of his luxury home in the Bahamas on Friday.

His lavish Caribbean estate, Nygard Cay, was seized by the Supreme Court of the Bahamas as part of a legal battle surrounding Nygard’s efforts to dredge the sea floor around the estate. According to a story by Maura Forrest in the National Post, it’s part of a bizarre conflict between Nygard, his billionaire neighbour, and environmental groups in the region.

Forrest explained the situation to 680 CJOB Monday afternoon. She said an environmental group called Save the Bays is owed $3 million in legal fees from Nygard, which led to the seizure.

“They say that Mr. Nygard has managed to essentially double the area of his estate with this dredging, which they say is illegal,” said Forrest.

“The court has tried a number of times to stop Mr. Nygard from dredging. He has continued to dredge in contempt of court several times in the last five years or so.”

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“The latest development is that the supreme court has seized control of his estate, in part because Mr. Nygard has failed to pay the legal fees of Save the Bays, this environmental group that has been fighting him. ”

Dredging, which is an operation to remove material from one part of a water environment and relocate it to another, is only one part of this conflict, however. Forrest said Nygard’s ongoing feud with neighbour Louis Bacon – a billionaire hedge fund manager and board member of Save the Bays – has taken this case on some unexpected turns.

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According to Forrest’s story in the Post, a 2016 lawsuit alleged Nygard had tried to hire criminals to kill Bacon and an associate, which, somehow, isn’t the strangest part of the drama.

“At one point, a lawyer working for Mr. Nygard organized a sort of parade where he tried to link Mr. Bacon to the KKK, in an effort, I guess, to discredit him in the Bahamas,” said Forrest.

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“So far, I’ve not seen a statement from (Nygard),” she said, “however, his organization has made statements in the past saying that they had a permit for the dredging and that this was sanctioned by the government.”