NY Times, July 14, 2007
Conrad Black Found Guilty in Fraud Trial
By RICHARD SIKLOS
Conrad M. Black, the gregarious press tycoon also known as Lord Black of
Crossharbour, was found guilty today by a Chicago jury of three counts
of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. He could face up
to 35 years in prison.
Mr. Black was cleared of nine other counts against him, including
racketeering. He is expected to appeal and the judge presiding over the
case, Amy J. St. Eve, is expected to allow him to remain free on bail
during that process. Three former associates were each found guilty of
three counts of mail fraud.
The verdict came nearly four months after Mr. Black and the three
associates went on trial together after being charged in 2005 with
looting Hollinger International Inc., the Chicago-based company Mr.
Black led, of more than $80 million. At the trial, the amount was
reduced to $60 million.
Through Hollinger International, Mr. Black once commanded a far-flung
media empire that included The Daily Telegraph, The Jerusalem Post and
The Chicago Sun-Times, as well as scores of local community papers.
At the conclusion of the trial, the jury was asked to rule on numerous
counts of mail and wire fraud, tax fraud, obstruction of justice and
racketeering against Mr. Black. Also charged with various counts of mail
and tax fraud were Hollinger’s former chief financial officer, John A.
Boultbee; a former vice president, Peter Y. Atkinson; and a former
Hollinger lawyer, Mark S. Kipnis.
F. David Radler, who was Mr. Black’s business partner for more than 30
years, pleaded guilty to a single fraud charge and was a key witness for
the government, though prosecutors tried to play down his prominence in
the case during their closing arguments. If the court were to approve
his deal with prosecutors, Mr. Radler could spend as little as six
months in a Canadian prison. Separately, he agreed to pay close to $100
million to settle various civil and Securities and Exchange Commission
actions stemming from the fraud.
The S.E.C. case grew out of an internal investigation at Hollinger that
ousted Mr. Black and Mr. Radler as the top executives in 2003 and
spawned the criminal investigation.
In addition to his potential incarceration, Mr. Black also faces more
than $1 billion in civil litigation from former shareholders of
Hollinger International, the company itself and the S.E.C.
At the heart of the case were so-called noncompete payments, in which
Mr. Black, Mr. Radler and the others were accused of lining their
pockets with nearly $60 million to in effect not compete with themselves
in markets where papers were being bought or sold. The transactions in
question took place between 1998 and 2001, when, under financial
pressure, Hollinger International decided to sell most of its newspaper
holdings including its United States community newspapers and the
largest chain of daily newspapers in Canada and The National Post, a
paper Mr. Black had founded in 1998.
The money, according to the government, rightfully belonged to the
shareholders of Hollinger and amounted to illegal bonuses. Separate
charges against Mr. Black alone accused of him of improperly using
company coffers to subsidize his lavish lifestyle. Days of testimony
dissected his purchase of an apartment on Park Avenue in New York from
the company, a trip on the company’s Gulfstream jet to Bora Bora for
vacation and a birthday party he threw for his wife, Barbara Amiel, at a
posh New York restaurant in December 2000.
Mr. Black did not testify in his own defense, nor did the other
co-defendants. Rather, through his lawyer, Mr. Black argued that he had
done nothing wrong and was the victim of a betrayal by Mr. Radler and
former directors who he had appointed but had turned against him amid
the intense focus on corporate governance after the collapses of Enron
and WorldCom. Unlike those companies, Hollinger International never
faced financial collapse although most of its newspapers have now been
sold and it is known as the Sun-Times Media Group.
===
http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/40_feat2.html
IN-DEPTH
Black days for Conrad
November 23, 2004
Derrick O’Keefe
Grasping for a silver lining, one could speculate that George Bush’s
election will prove to be a boon to a host of progressive publishing
houses. Dozens of books on the administration’s handling of the war on
Iraq, and (lack of) character sketches like John Nichols’ Dick, The Man
Who Is President, have been given an extended lease on their shelf life.
There’s one title that’s only tangentially related to the bevy of
anti-war, anti-Bush titles that’s well worth checking out, especially if
one is looking to take solace in the demise of a right-wing icon. And in
a world offering precious little consolation to the forces of peace and
justice these days, the fall of Conrad Black fits the bill and then
some. Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, written by Globe and Mail
business reporters Jacquie McNish and Sinclair Stewart, traces the
precipitous plunge of the media tycoon and his “Lady Black,” the
appalling Barbara Amiel.
McNish and Stewart’s book outlines the rise and fall of Conrad Black.
The quintessential example of a guy ‘born on third who thinks he hit a
triple,’ Black’s ambition was only rivalled by his self-absorption, and
sense of superiority and entitlement. So his first business
misadventure, a scheme to sell stolen exam questions to students at the
elite Upper Canada College which resulted in his expulsion in 1959, is
dismissed by his Lordship as having “inconvenienced hundreds of
unoffending people, students, and faculty.” (page 28)
And so it went for Conrad, acquiring ever more real estate – including
his inherited estate near Toronto, mansions in both London and Palm
Beach, and a lavish apartment in New York – and working on pet literary
projects such as a massive biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all
in addition to expanding his media empire. In the 1990s, Conrad added
two more “assets” to his stable, acquiring the far-right polemicist
Barbara Amiel as his wife, and later founding the equally far-right
National Post.
Much like the myriad anti-Bush tracts and documentaries, McNish and
Stewart focus too much on the (admittedly loathsome) personalities of
Black and his close associates at Hollinger Inc., such as the
Vancouver-based David Radler. Not that a little “piling on” isn’t
enjoyable to watch, especially given Black’s notoriously thin skin.
MacLean’s magazine and Peter C. Newman, the publication’s former editor
who gave Amiel her first big gig as a columnist with the Canadian
journalistic flagship in the 1970s, joined the chorus last week, with a
gossipy no-holds-barred excerpt from his upcoming memoir.
But such ad hominem attacks, however irresistible, can quickly
overshadow the real issues at play. So we had the spectacle of the CBC’s
overconfident yet often painfully shallow “man of letters” Evan Solomon
asking Newman this question regarding his chapter on Conrad Black:
I want to talk about the chapter on Conrad Black because his story
is one of the great stories of our time. As a journalist how do you know
that Barbara Amiel introduced Conrad Black to oral sex? What is your
source? [1]
Evan and Peter never did delve into the really “great story” of our
time, the ascendance of Black and his Hollinger Inc., its overtly
far-right wing editorial stance and the impact that has had in pulling
the political discourse in North America and beyond to the right over
the past decades. Fully-integrated with the western political elite,
Black was unabashed in using his media to advance strident foreign and
domestic policy objectives. To illustrate, Hollinger’s senior
international advisors as of 2000 included a former secretary general of
NATO, a former president of France, Margaret Thatcher and two of the
oldest and most hawkish of U.S. foreign policy-makers, Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Henry Kissenger.
The past few years have provided ample evidence that when it comes to
corporate corruption, nepotism and graft, there’s a whole harvest of bad
apples. In fact, far from these scandals reflecting the personal
weaknesses of the Martha Stewarts and Ken Lays of the world, they in
fact reveal to us the real functioning of the capitalist system. Wrong
Way, then, goes awry by failing to question the overall corporate
system, preferring to cast Black as a maverick, a throwback to the “bad
old days” of larger-than-life barons of industry.
Indeed, as gleeful as some may have been to see Hollinger’s
over-extension, and now its CEO’s demise, we are left with the reality
that CanWest-Global and the Aspers have taken over from Black without
missing a beat. In fact, the monopolization of the country’s daily
newspapers is more advanced than ever, and the National Post remains a
money-losing conduit of the most reactionary politics, subsidized by the
rest of the Aspers’ vast holdings.
Rather than just seeing Conrad Black as a despicable character who took
advantage of shareholders and the companies he oversaw, then, it’s
important to look at the ways in which the very functioning of the
corporate world encourages the worst elements of human nature, and
elevates the worst people to the heights of power and influence.
That said, though, one should always be able to take a moment to enjoy
life’s little pleasures. So, treat yourself, and take that moment to
savour the ignominious downfall of Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel.
[1] Transcript of CBC Sunday, November 20, 2004,
http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/newman.html
