Billionaire Leon Black, one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street, claims lawyers and spin doctors working on behalf of a former lover and financed by a wealthy backer are conspiring to destroy him professionally and personally.
In another turn in the legal saga involving Black and Guzel Ganieva, a former Russian model who has accused him of rape, Black filed a lawsuit on Thursday in New York under the federal racketeering laws often used to bring down Mafia dons.
The suit against Ganieva, law firm Wigdor LLP, and other unidentified defendants carries a tantalizing claim: an unnamed “funder” -- someone who can take on Black and knows how his world works -- is behind the curtain, working to help Ganieva, her lawyers and media specialists to smear Black.
The defendants “duped and manipulated the media and the courts, using the mails and the wires, to orchestrate an assassination of Mr. Black on every level,” Black’s lawyers said in the filing.
“This is an obvious act of retaliation,” responded Jeanne Christensen, Ganieva’s lawyer at Wigdor. “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.
The drama between Black, 70, and Ganieva has escalated in a series of back-and-forth lawsuits. Ganieva’s initial allegations of sexual assault, first revealed in Tweets in mid-March, followed reports of Black’s larger than expected payments for tax advice and financial services to disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein totaling $158 million.
Black has since stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management Inc., the firm he co-founded, and receded from coveted roles including chairman of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Black has accused Ganieva of extortion and denied the allegation that he sexually assaulted her, instead characterizing their relationship as a consensual affair, which started in 2008 and ended around 2014. To keep it secret, he made regular payments to her totaling more than $9 million. He also denies taking Ganieva to Florida, where she claims she was brought for the purpose of engaging in sex acts with Epstein.
Black’s legal team has referred to flight logs and quoted from text messages and audio recordings that they contend will prove his innocence.
Thursday’s suit, filed in Manhattan, details what Black’s legal team characterizes as a conspiracy against him.