GUY Gentile, the transplant banker left to fish his luxury car from his backyard pool after a breakup, said he must have driven his jilted lover “crazy” just before the deed.

Mr Gentile, in an interview with The Tribune Monday, insisted he was partly to blame for the incident that has since gained international notoriety.

“I must accept some responsibility, if a woman is not crazy, she doesn’t love you,” he said.

“And I must have driven her crazy for her to have driven my car into the pool.”

Gentile’s Russian-born, model girlfriend, Kristina Kuchma, 24, in a fit of rage drove his Mercedes S400 hybrid into the pool at his Ocean Club home after he ended their 18-month relationship by a text and allegedly reneged on a promise to provide $50,000 for one of Kuchma’s business ventures.

Earlier Mr Gentile told the New York Post he initially feared Kuchma had locked herself in the car before she intentionally sank it.

However, he discovered the car was empty. His concern quickly grew to anger.

“My heart dropped because of [fears she was inside]. I didn’t care about the car at that moment,” he said.

“But after I realised she wasn’t in it, then I (started) to get p* off that she would pull something like this after everything I’ve done for her.

“I dumped her. She dumped my car.”

Mr Gentile said he later received a text message from Kuchma which read: “Liar! You told me you will help me to start a business! That were your words! Now you want to be an investor? Well investor I have a surprise for you on a backyard, start with that investment idea first.”

“I said, ‘You know what? You got the wrong guy. If you want a guy who’s going to hand you money for nothing, you got the wrong guy’,” Mr Gentile added.

Mr Gentile is the now-Nassau-based head of Swiss-America Securities. He relocated to the Bahamas amid an alleged securities fraud which occurred between 2007-2009.

Mr Gentile, a US citizen, was indicted by federal authorities in March 2016 on criminal charges stemming from the alleged fraud.

He and his Bahamian businesses were subsequently “forced” to play key roles in undercover ‘sting’ operations targeting criminals earning millions of dollars from market manipulation scams. The US government leveraged the 2007-2009 fraud case to ensure Mr Gentile became a ‘co-operating witness’.

The case was eventually dismissed on a legal technicality, as district court judge, Jose Linares, found the action was effectively “out of time” under US law. 

Gentile owned and operator the failed Sur Club Sushi restaurant.