Canadian clothing manufacturer Peter Nygard fined, sentenced to jail in Bahamas over breach of court order

A judge in the Bahamas has sentenced Canadian fashion designer Peter Nygard to 90 days in prison and fined him $150,000 after finding he breached a court order prohibiting the disclosure of emails that were stolen from a non-profit group.

In a decision released Nov. 15, Bahamas Supreme Court Justice Ruth M.L. Bowe-Darville also ordered Nygard to make a full written apology and pay the fine within seven days, or risk additional fines and jail time.

The case centres around a dispute involving emailsfrom the environmental group Save the Bays, which has been critical of what it said were illegal dredging and development activities at Nygard's waterfront home in the Bahamas.

Nygard moved from Winnipeg to the Bahamas several years ago.

Save the Bays said in a news release that Nygard was found to have breached an injunction to keep emails stolen from the non-profit group private.

Bowe-Darville also ordered the designer to promise in writing within seven days to stop using the emails or be sentenced to another 30 days in prison and an additional $5,000 for every day the fine remains unpaid. The court documents don't contain details about the emails and don't say that they were stolen.

A judge in the Bahamas previously fined Nygard $50,000 for violating a court order to stop dredging near his beachfront home.

At the time, a spokesperson for Nygardsaid the designer disagreed with the ruling but paid the $50,000 fine ahead of the deadline.

"His repeated disrespect for the administration of justice has finally caught up with him," Fred Smith, a director with Save the Bays, said in a news release on Tuesday.

"I hope he is man enough to come back to the Bahamas he says he loves so much to serve his time and pay the $150,000 fine."

Nygard's Winnipeg-based lawyer, Jay Prober, couldn't be reached for comment by CBC News, but told the Winnipeg Free Press that his client's legal team in the Bahamasplans toappealthe sentence.

"In my view, it's unfair, it's unreasonable, it's unnecessary and it's unheard of," Prober told the newspaper.

"It's really very excessive.It will be appealed all the way to the [judicial committee of the] Privy Council, if necessary, if we don't win in the Bahamian Court of Appeal."