Conrad Black

Is a Zionist but not a Jew. He is married to one though. She is Barbara Amiel. The Wikipedia  admits to her. He was caught thieving at school. He has been accused of big time thieving since and the SEC is getting a grip. They are not such a soft touch as the English equivalent. He got $7 million in unauthorized payments according to an internal inquiry. He is being done for civil fraud by the SEC and sued for $200 million by his old firm. Calling him a big time thief at this stage gives him a chance to sue for libel and to claim that his trial will have been prejudiced so I am  going to refer to him as the accused.
PS Black is a Zionist who owned the Jerusalem Post.

 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black

 

Conrad Black

Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour PC , OC , MA , LL.D. (born August 25, 1944 in Montreal, Quebec), is a Canadian-born British biographer, financier and newspaper magnate. He is the latest in a series of Canadian-born British press lords—his predecessors were Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, and Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet. Black is married to Barbara Amiel, a well-known right-wing columnist.

Through his Ravelston Corporation he has a 82% share-holding in the Toronto-based Hollinger Inc. group which, through Hollinger International, owns or controls several newspapers, notably in the United States, including the Chicago Sun-Times (1994). He also holds a minority interest in the New York Sun (2002). Hollinger once owned a large number of Canadian newspapers, accounting for a plurality of that country's daily newspaper circulation, and acquired and relaunched the Financial Post as a section of the National Post (1998), in large part to get a foothold in the competitive Toronto newspaper market. In 2004 his Telegraph Group in the United Kingdom was sold to David and Frederick Barclay.

Early life and career

Black was born into a wealthy Toronto family. His father, George Montegu Black, Jr., was the president of Canadian Breweries, an international brewing conglomerate. Conrad Black was first educated at Upper Canada College from which he was expelled for selling stolen exams. He then attended Trinity College School, the alma mater of his older brother Montegu Black. Lord Black lasted less than a year. He eventually graduated from another private school in Toronto called Thornton Hall. He continued his education at Carleton University (History, 1965) and Laval University (Law, 1970), later completing a master's degree (MA) at McGill University. He became involved in a number of businesses, mainly newspapers, but including mining and publishing. His family founded the Ravelston Corporation in 1969 as an investment vehicle. Together with friends, David Radler and Peter G. White, Black purchased and operated the Sherbrooke Record, the small English daily in Sherbrooke, Quebec. In 1971, the three formed "Sterling Newspapers Limited", a holding company that would acquire several other small newspapers.

Black has a son, James, and daughter, Alana.

Conrad Black was taken under the wing of Bud McDougald and E. P. Taylor, two of the most powerful businessmen in Canada. Following the death of McDougald, in 1978 Conrad Black acquired the shares owned by McDougald's widow in Argus Corporation, a mammoth Canadian holding company, whose holdings at the time Black took it over included some of Canada's finest blue-chip companies such as Dominion Stores, Canada's largest supermarket chain, Massey Ferguson, Canada's large multi-national farm machinery corporation, Hollinger Mines, an important gold-mining company in Timmins, Ontario, and Norcen Energy, an energy and pipeline operation. His record in managing these operations is deemed by most financial experts as less than successful.

In 1990 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was ranked 235th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2004, with an estimated wealth of £175m.

[edit]

 

Becoming a British press lord

In 1985, Black first entered the UK newspaper business, buying into the Telegraph group. By 1990 his companies ran over 400 newspaper titles in North America. Many of these were disposed of towards the end of the 1990s with around 150 titles being sold in a single deal with CanWest Global Communications Corp. He launched the National Post in 1998 but sold his interest in 2001. He gave up the majority of his remaining Canadian media interests in 2001.

Black gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a British life peer because of Canada's Nickle Resolution, that called on the monarch (King or Queen) to desist from granting aristocratic titles in Canada. Black had attempted to evade the resolution by taking dual British and Canadian citizenship and seeking the peerage as a Briton, and he unsuccessfully sued the Canadian government in 2001 when this tactic failed. Black, who is considered to be fairly right-wing (especially by Canadian standards), has sparred several times in public with then Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who is much further left on the political spectrum and who subsequently instructed the Queen to withhold the peerage as long as Black held Canadian citizenship. Despite divesting himself of his citizenship, Black continues to enjoy the privileges of being a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada such as use of a special passport.

[edit]

 

Controversies surrounding Black

Black has made several controversial statements, including the suggestions that Canada should join the United States and abandon its universal publicly-funded health care system or medicare. Ironically, Lord Black's scholarly work on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (published in November 2003) clearly shows him as a strong supporter of Roosevelt's liberal New Deal. The Roosevelt biography was met with positive reviews; it came some thirty years after his biography of Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, widely considered the definitive work on the man, and written when Black was in his twenties.

On November 17, 2003 it was announced that Black would be resigning as chief executive of Hollinger after an internal inquiry alleged that he had received over $7 million in unauthorized payments of company funds. The United States SEC has launched an investigation of his company's affairs. On January 17, 2004 Hollinger International reported that the executive committee of the board of directors obtained Black's resignation as chairman. At the same time the special committee in Hollinger already investigating the unauthorised payments filed a lawsuit in New York for the recovery of the money. Hollinger International also announced filed a 200-million-USD lawsuit against Lord Black and his former top lieutenant David Radler as well as the companies Black has used to control the publishing it.

On November 15, 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud lawsuits against Lord Black and several others. (BBC)

Black was also involved, albeit tangentially, in a controversy in December of 2001 when the then-French ambassador to the UK, Daniel Bernard, called Israel a "shitty little country" in a conversation the two had at a private dinner party. The resulting scandal led to Bernard being reassigned to Algeria the following year.

Earlier, in the 1980s, Black appropriated over $62 million from the Dominion workers' pension fund over the opposition of his employees before divesting himself of the grocery store chain. Indeed, many of his critics have pointed out that most if not all of his acquisitions had been financed by money belonging to shareholders or employees rather than by the risk of his own funds. He does not dispute this and noted that he made his early purchases of brokerages and newspapers by borrowing half the money from a bank and the other half from the seller.

The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticised an incident in which Black paid an American columnist, George Will, $25,000 for a single day of consulting, after which Will wrote favourably about Black without disclosing the payment. [1]

As Black has often been a controversial figure in Canadian life, he has been mercilessly lampooned by the Toronto humour magazine Frank as "Lord Tubby".

[edit]

 

References

[2] News release from the Privy Council of Canada on the lawsuit filed against Jean Chretien by Conrad Black

[edit]

 

External links

 

Errors & omissions, broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.

Email me at Mike Emery. All financial contributions are cheerfully accepted. If you want to keep it private, use my PGP key.  Home

Updated  on  Tuesday, 29 October 2019 10:49:20

Conrad Black faces new charges  [ 19 December 2005 ]
He was facing eight wire fraud raps. Now he has got two more RICO [ Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ] charges. He is in the frame for nicking around $90 million which is a useful sum.

 

Black Charged With Fraud  [ 19 November ]
Not before time. Big time fraud means big time investigation or big time getting away with it; usually the latter. He will keep stalling but we might get an honest result and a decent sentence. Paddy Fitzgerald is doing what it takes and extraditing Black might be what it takes. He leaned on the White House too. He is a man to watch.
PS Without a Zionist as owner The Telegraph might be able clean up its act.

 

Conrad Black Pardoned By Donald Trump [ 15 May 2019 ]
QUOTE
The two counts for which I have just received a presidential pardon, and of which I was “convicted” in 2011, after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously vacated them only to have a self-serving appellate judge reinstate them, were for wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

The alleged fraud was reception of $285,000 in my office in Toronto while I was in England, from our American company, which was approved by independent directors, referred to in public filings of the corporation, but which the company secretary had not completely formalized, in what the trial judge correctly regarded as a clerical error on the secretary’s part. The reinvention of this crime enabled the appellate panel to whom the Supreme Court remanded the vacated counts “to assess the gravity of their own errors” to resuscitate a count of obstruction of justice against me. This consisted of my removal of boxes of personal papers and material that had already been furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which I took out under security cameras I had had installed, with the approval of the acting president of the company and the principal member present of the court-appointed inspector, as I vacated my office of 27 years from a building I chiefly owned, on an unjust local court order of a publicity-seeking judge. The local jurisdiction found no cause of action nor any violation of a document retention order. I was always presumptively innocent in the initial jurisdiction. It was nonsense, all of it; there was never a word of truth to any of it. And now it is over, after 16 years, including three years and two weeks in U.S. federal prisons.

Prior to Monday of last week, I had only once before, 18 years ago, received a telephone call from an incumbent president of the United States. I had not spoken to the current president since he took office. When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said “Hello” and started to ask if this was a prank (suspecting my friends in the British tabloid media), but the caller spoke politely over me: “Please hold for the president.” Two seconds later probably the best-known voice in the world said “Is that the great Lord Black?” I said “Mr. President, you do me great honour telephoning me.”

He could not have been more gracious and quickly got to his point: he was granting me a full pardon that would “Expunge the bad rap you got.” He had followed the case closely and offered to come to give evidence at my trial in Chicago in 2007 on one of the counts (I was acquitted of that one). He said that there would be some controversy, “But you can handle that better than anyone.” I asked “Do you authorize me to say that your motivation is that it was an unjust verdict?” He checked with the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who was in the room, if this would be a problem legally, and was told and affirmed to me that I could say that was his motive and that he was reversing an unjust verdict.

“We’ve known each other a long time,” the president told me, “but that wasn’t any part of the reason. Nor has any of the supportive things you’ve said and written about me.” I suggested that he knew ”better than anyone” the antics of some U.S. prosecutors. (I had had Robert Mueller as director of the FBI, which we caught installing illegal bugging devices in our home in New York and in many falsehoods; James Comey as deputy attorney-general, and Patrick Fitzgerald, now Comey’s counsel, as U.S. attorney in Chicago. They were all, as my distinguished caller on Monday has described Comey, “bad cops.”) We moved briefly on to generalities, greetings to wives, I thanked him for his call and again for the purpose of his call, and the conversation ended.

For my friends, no explanation was ever necessary; for my enemies, none would ever have sufficed

My long ordeal with the U.S. justice system was never anything but a confluence of unlucky events, the belligerence of several corporate governance charlatans, and grandstanding local and American judges, all fanned by an unusually frenzied international media showing exceptional interest in the case because I was a media owner.

The rockslide began in 2003 when it came to light that some payments from our American to our Canadian company and to certain executives, including me, though fully revealed in public filings, had not been fully authorized. As the controversy continued, local Toronto judges and the Ontario Securities Commission prevented us from running the company, where there was no accounting fraud, hard profitable assets, and $2 billion of shareholder equity, all of which was squandered in poor administration and greedily consumed by court-appointed or sanctioned lawyers and accountants and the relentless intrusions of regulators seeking headlines, not the shareholders’ interest.

The vaporization of $2 billion dollars of shareholder value affected tens of thousands of families in all parts of Canada and the United States. With aching slowness the case against me disintegrated. Of the 17 counts in 2005, four, including money-laundering and perjury, were abandoned. Nine others were acquittals by a prodigiously un-Solomonic jury, many of whom slept through the proceedings. So, at times, did my infirm counsel. They were good men but of advanced age and poor health, and lacked experience in commercial cases; one was a Canadian lawyer who had never pleaded in an American court before. They did not have the stamina for an 18-week, very complicated criminal trial. (Mark Steyn called them “the dream team,” a bit unfair but at such times one must get one’s laughs where they arise.)

Former Hollinger International CEO Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel Black arrive at the Dirksen Federal courthouse, July 13, 2007 in Chicago. Scott Olson/Getty Images/File

The heaviest counts were among those rejected, such as the preposterous charge of racketeering. I was convicted on three fraud counts, and one of obstruction of justice. I reported to low-security prison and had an interesting time tutoring inmates who had failed in the attempts the Bureau of Prisons requires of all inmates who have not matriculated from high school to get over that hurdle. I recruited a tutor for science (a former commander of the torpedo room of a nuclear submarine), and one for mathematics (a mathematics teacher from a high school in Arkansas). All of the 204 candidates we worked with during my time did indeed graduate. While it was an outrage that I was there at all, I got on well with everyone, found many of the people there interesting and often memorable characters, and the graduation ceremonies for our students moving occasions. My wife came to visit me every week, even when she had to come directly from the Olympics in Beijing.

We went to the Circuit Court of Appeal in Chicago, where I was represented by the former deputy solicitor general of the U.S., Andrew Frey. But the presiding judge, Richard Posner, levitating in his megalomania, obviously had not even read the filings and interrupted my lawyer in 32 of the 45 sentences he began. Posner was just part of the prosecution.

The eminent barrister Miguel Estrada appealed for me to the Supreme Court of the United States, which only agrees to hear about two per cent of the applications it receives. The court accepted our petition and unanimously vacated the four remaining counts, declared the Honest Services Statute that had been the basis of the convictions to be unconstitutional, and rewrote it, requiring a bribe to take place (one was never alleged in our case). In the peculiar American practice, it sent the case back to Posner and the two silent judges on his appellate panel. I was released on $2 million dollars bail (down from $38 million during the trial), but could not leave the United States. Even Posner, who was on the losing end of public acerbities with a couple of the Supreme Court justices at the time, dropped two of the counts, but resurrected the clerical error of the company secretary as a crime of the co-defendants, enabling Posner to cling like a drowning man to the rubbish about obstruction, which Andy Frey told him was “in 45 years of practice, the feeblest case of obstruction of justice I have seen.” This was a flimsy fig-leaf to maintain the absurd pretence that there had ever been the slightest justification for the lengthy and expensive prosecution in the first place. And the trial judge, equally spuriously, sent me back to prison for a seven-month victory lap, congratulating me on “being a better person” because of my imprisonment and the extensive evidence the U.S. Probation Office presented of my exemplary performance as a tutor.

“The court wishes you well, Mr. Black” were her parting words. They were unrequited.

My long ordeal with the U.S. justice system was never anything but a confluence of unlucky events

On May 7, 2012, I went directly from Miami Federal Prison to the airport and onto a chartered plane and returned to my home in Toronto after an absence of five years. It was seven years less a day after that that President Trump called me. I am now, at last, officially not guilty even in the conviction-mad United States. None of this would have been the subject of a criminal case in any other serious jurisdiction. It was for this fiction that I spent three years and two weeks in prisons and endured significant official persecution in Canada, and the great companies my associates and I built over more than 30 years were torn down, driven into bankruptcy and destroyed, while the trans-border corporate governance hypocrites stuffed a third of a billion dollars into their pockets in ill-gotten professional fees.

I did have the satisfaction of winning the greatest libel settlement in Canadian history ($5 million) from the egregious Richard Breeden, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the other authors of the infamous special committee report of 2004, which really poured gasoline on the fire and ignited the criminal charges. The American criminal justice system is frequently and largely evil; I was convicted for attempted obstruction of injustice. It was never anything but a smear job.

For my friends, no explanation was ever necessary; for my enemies, none would ever have sufficed. As I told the trial judge at resentencing: I always try to take success like a gentleman and reversals like a man. On to better things and brighter days.

National Post
cmbletters@gmail.com
UNQUOTE
Mark Steyn Approves