By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – The billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Bacon has filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against the Canadian fashion designer Peter Nygård, escalating a long-running battle between the owners of neighboring properties in an exclusive gated community in the Bahamas. Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management LP in New York, said the campaign has included the use of doctored YouTube videos and organization of street rallies, and falsely linked him to arson, bribery, drug smuggling, the Ku Klux Klan and murder. Nygård “caused these brazen lies to be published with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth,” Bacon said in the complaint, which is dated Jan. 14 and filed with a New York state court in Manhattan.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR