Arpad Busson: International Man of Mystery

                                                                     (Arpad Busson)
 

Arpad Bussom, the man who appears to be funding the curious lawsuit which make up the previous parts of this serious, appears to have lived a charmed life cruising around the globe, bedding beautiful celebrities, with ties to notorious figures like Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein. 

According to an apparent funding agreement Busson has been funding the lawsuit of Martin James Schulz, a man with an extensive criminal history, against Ryan Millsap, a highly respected executive, who recently sold his movie studio for more than $100 million. 

Schulz claims that he and Millsap had an oral agreement making him entitled to almost all the sale proceeds. 

Busson and Schulz appear to have met in rehab in 2017; Busson was in rehab even as a high profile custody case played out, that with his ex-girlfriend Uma Thurman. 

"At this point, Luna (their daughter) has all the advantages in life ... two parents who love her ... who provide amply for her. She will have every opportunity to be intellectually, culturally enriched," Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper said as Thurman nodded vigorously in agreement.

"The only thing lacking and I hope it's forthcoming is that her parents can reach some place in life to put aside their rancor and anger against one another, never loving or even like each other but cooperate with each other."

Judge Cooper is a judge I am familiar with, having covered him in the story of Dr. Micheline Epstein. Here is part of that. 

Dr. Epstein, meanwhile, told TAC it has been more than a month since she has seen her daughter, thanks to Justice Matthew Cooper of the New York Supreme Court.

When she dropped her daughter off at school in early March, she was not wearing a mask on the sidewalk. A school employee demanded she put one on and Epstein refused, leading to an argument. The school employee reported the matter to the school who reported it to both parents; Epstein said her ex-husband then filed an emergency motion suspending her custody time.

Justice Cooper granted him the motion while further ordering Epstein to wear a mask in her own home as a condition of reinstating supervised visits. She has not seen her daughter since Cooper’s order in March.

Cooper has also done high profile divorces for Robert DeNiro, Paul George, and Damon Dash. While Busson and Thurman eventually settled, it was after bitter custody battle. 

 Uma Thurman's baby daddy doesn't deserve more visitation with their daughter -- because she says he's been a flaky father who has rarely seen the girl.

Sources connected to the case tell TMZ ... when she and ex-fiance Arpad Busson head to court in a few months, Uma will argue Arpad cancels his scheduled time to see their 4-year-old "7 times out of 10."

We're told Arpad is the one who's asking the judge for more time, but our sources say these are just "bullying tactics." Our sources say he gets a significant amount of custodial time currently, yet doesn't come close to taking advantage of it.

The Sun Newspaper described just how sordid the case got. 

So far, it seems neither party has any interest in being “reasonable”.

Multi-millionaire Arpad, 53, has painted Uma, 46, as a pill-popping, temperamental mother who is prone to severe mood swings and treated ­pregnancy like a “business deal”.

It also emerged in court that the Pulp Fiction star suffered from ­attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a “learning difficulty”.

Meanwhile Arpad — known as “Arki” — has been grilled about an alleged addiction to hookers and cheating on a college admissions test, and ­portrayed as an errant dad who ­cancels plans with his daughter to attend concerts and football games. 

Thurman is not the only celebrity Busson has children with; he also was involved with Elle MacPherson, with whom he has two children. 

That relationship appears to have ended better as the Daily Mail described. 

Elle Macpherson has shared a social snap with ex-partner and father of her two sons Arpad Busson.

Taking to Instagram on Tuesday, the 53-year-old Australian model uploaded a black-and-white image of Arpad, 54, wearing a Santa hat and a big smile.

 Also tagging their eldest son Flynn Busson, Elle wrote: 'Thankyou for a magical Christmas, love you,' adding a love heart emoji.

It's not the only part of Busson's life that is colorful. He's a financier who has made and lost millions many times over.

As the story from INews in England called, "Arki Busson: The rise and fall of the man to know in finance, who used his connections to raise capital" noted, though he had made tens of millions as a hedge fund manager, in 2008 he became embroiled with Bernie Madoff. 

It was around that time that cracks also began to appear in Mr Busson’s business empire. By 2009 EIM had lost almost half of its $15bn of assets under management as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, while his investment company became embroiled in Bernard Madoff’s $50bn Ponzi scheme, with Mr Busson making a $230m investment with the fraudster.

Busson was known as a fund to fund hedge fund manager. By this, he would take hedge fund money, and rather than investing it himself, he would disburse that money in other hedge funds. 

Like other fund managers, he put a lot of his money into Bernie Madoff's hedge fund. INews continued.

Problems mounted and turbulence followed. EIM was offloaded to Gottex Fund Management Holdings, a Swiss investment firm, in 2013. And in 2016 the company was renamed LumX.

Losses began to build with the latest set of accounts showing that LumX posted a loss of $13m in 2019, contributing to losses of more than $55m over the last five years. Over the same period, headcount at the firm fell from 139 employees to just 37 at the end of 2019. 

His hedge fund was eventually delisted from the Swiss exchange in 2020, the story noted.  

Madoff is not the only notorious character which Busson has rubbed shoulders with. 

His name also popped up on page 9 in Jeffrey Epstein's black book. 

As such, even as his professional life was spiraling down, and his personal life became the stuff of Page six type stories, Busson hooked up with Schulz to fund his lawsuit, arguing that Schulz is entitled to tens of millions in a sale of a movie studio due to a verbal contract. 

Post Script

Check out Part one and Part two of this series.