‘Personal, vindictive, inflammatory’: Epstein-linked legal battle ratchets up

With Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal conviction working its way toward an appeal, and Virginia Giuffre's civil case against Prince Andrew caught up in arguments over evidence and depositions, another high-profile case linked to the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is working through the New York court system.

It too is dragging in some of the biggest names in elite New York society, in this case sending shockwaves through the rarefied world of Manhattan finance.

Leon Black, one of New York's wealthiest men with an estimated net worth of $13.2bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and formerly chief of Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art (Moma), is locked in a bitter dispute with Guzel Ganieva, a Russian model and former mistress who accused him of sexual violence and claims she was pressured by Black to engage in sex acts with Epstein.

Over recent months, the dispute between Black, 70, and Ganieva has escalated with a series of back-and-forth lawsuits in which the accusations have grown ever more serious, and spiraled out to draw in figures from some of Manhattan's most powerful social circles.

Ganieva's initial allegations of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, gender-motivated violence and retaliation, were first revealed in tweets early last year, and followed revelations about $158m in payments Black made to Epstein for tax advice and financial services that precipitated his stepping down from Apollo and Moma.

In June, Ganieva sued Black in New York state court, described above, claiming he forced her to sign a 2015 non-disclosure agreement about their six-and-a-half-year relationship, and had defamed her by claiming she tried to extort him by threatening to go public with their relationship.

Lawyers for Black have said Ganieva's lawsuit is "a work of fiction" and said he made payments only to secure her silence about their relationship.