Federal and law enforcement agents raided the midtown offices of a Canadian fashion designer Tuesday in connection with a sex trafficking investigation, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Officers from the FBI and NYPD were spotted Tuesday at the Times Square offices of Peter Nygard, the founder of Nygard International.
The New York Times reported that earlier this month, "a federal lawsuit was filed by separate lawyers in New York on behalf of 10 women accusing Mr. Nygard of sexual assault. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Nygard used his company, Nygard International, and employees to procure young victims and ply them with alcohol and drugs."
Among other allegations in the civil class action lawsuit, Nygard is accused of coercing his victims -- whom he called "girlfriends" -- to have sex with other men, and of keeping a database of pictures and information of more than 7,500 underage girls and women dating back to 1987 on his company's corporate server, maintained by the Nygard Companies' corporate IT department.
A call to Nygard's representative Ken Frydman was not immediately returned Tuesday.
Frydman told ABC News in a statement, "Nygard welcomes the federal investigation and expects his name to be cleared. He has not been charged, is not in custody and is cooperating with the investigation."
The lawsuit alleges that Nygard used his estate in the Bahamas called Nygard Cay for so-called "pamper parties" where he "recruited, lured, and enticed young, impressionable, and often impoverished children and women, with cash payments and false promises of lucrative modeling opportunities to assault, rape, and sodomize them." He allegedly paid off officials and company employees to "groom and entice underage girls and women" by "means of alcohol, drugs, force, fraud and/or other forms of coercion to engage in commercial sex acts with these children and women, and, in many cases, with knowledge that they were less than eighteen years old."
He threatened his victims to stay quiet, the lawsuit alleges: "Nygard used his financial resources, influence, power in the Bahamas, and psychological manipulation to intimidate his victims and to ensure that his crimes were not reported. Those of his 'girlfriends' who tried to leave him were harassed and threatened by Bahamian police who were on Nygard’s payroll (and who were paid with Nygard Companies’ United States currency)."
Nygard International and Nygrard Holdings Limited are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
The New York Times also reported that Nygard's neighbor in the Bahamas, hedge fund founder Louis Bacon, had been embroiled in ongoing disputes with him and helped gather evidence of sex trafficking: "Investigators and lawyers tied to Mr. Bacon offered Nygard associates generous incentives to build an abuse case against the Canadian — Cartier jewelry, a regular salary or a year’s rent in a gated community, according to documents and interviews. Smaller payments filtered down to some accusers, which could be used to undermine their credibility in any court case or investigation."
Nygard's spokesman told the New York Times that Bacon was trying to take him down with false accusations: "Ken Frydman, his spokesman, denied all the claims and said Mr. Bacon had spent more than a decade trying 'to smear Peter Nygard by coercing women to fabricate and manufacture sordid stories about him.' Mr. Nygard also accused Mr. Bacon in a lawsuit of masterminding a conspiracy 'to plant a false story' in The Times about sexual misconduct."
Nygard has not been arrested or charged, the U.S. Attorney's office confirmed.
