Leon Black Alleges a Conspiracy to Destroy Him on ‘Every Level’
(Bloomberg) -- Leon Black escalated his conflict with former Russian model Guzel Ganieva, who has accused him of sexual assault, by laying out a conspiracy to destroy him professionally and personally.
Black, the billionaire co-founder of Apollo Global Management Inc., filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday in New York against Ganieva, her law firm Wigdor LLP, and other unidentified defendants, including what he says is a secret “funder” and public relations professionals.
“The defendants here created an Enterprise to extort and cancel one of the world’s most prominent business leaders,” Black’s lawyers said in the filing, which cites civil federal racketeering laws. “They duped and manipulated the media and the courts, using the mails and the wires, to orchestrate an assassination of Mr. Black on every level: to humiliate his family; damage his company; threaten his ability to do business; and even suggest he was guilty of a crime when they know he is not.”
“This is an obvious act of retaliation,” said Jeanne Christensen, Ganieva’s lawyer at Wigdor. “The first time Leon Black sued our client, Ms. Ganieva, he withdrew his claims just weeks later. It is disheartening to learn that Quinn Emanuel, despite the firm’s marketing campaign to represent sexual assault victims, is now defending Leon Black and suing a rape survivor and the law firm representing her. We look forward to defending ourselves against these ludicrous allegations.”
Ganieva didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Black, 70, has been locked in a legal dispute with Ganieva for months.
In mid-March, Ganieva wrote on Twitter that she was “sexually harassed and abused by him for years.” Black later said he had a consensual affair with Ganieva, which started in 2008 and ended around 2014, and made regular payments to keep it a secret.
It “took an Enterprise as skilled in social and mainstream media as it was in law; an Enterprise well-funded enough to take on a billionaire; an Enterprise that convinced Ms. Ganieva to forgo the $100,000 Mr. Black was paying her each month to publicly smear Mr. Black’s name and squeeze even more out of him,” according to Black’s filing.
Ganieva filed a defamation lawsuit and has alleged the private equity tycoon raped her and took her to Florida to have her engage in sex acts with Jeffrey Epstein. Black’s legal team has accused her of extortion and insisted for months that the accusations are untrue and quoted from text messages and audio recordings that they contend prove his innocence.
Filing a lawsuit that accuses opposing lawyers of racketeering is highly unusual. The document also targets unnamed public relations specialists and claims there is a financial backer with the resources to compensate Ganieva after she allegedly broke an agreement that promised her millions of dollars by keeping her relationship with Black private.
They are referred to as John Doe 1, 2 and 3.
Black’s ties to Epstein forced him to step back from the powerhouse firm he founded as well as other high-profile positions. While a review conducted by law firm Dechert found no evidence that Black was involved with Epstein’s criminal activities, it revealed that the Apollo co-founder had paid $158 million to the disgraced sex offender from 2012 to 2017 for tax advice and financial services, an amount much larger than previously known.
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