believe It Or Not, I was A Conrad Black Fan

Conrad Black - Joke's on Us!

Friday, July 13, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com

So Conrad Black has been found guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. A “jury of his peers” found he and three co-defendants defrauded shareholders of Hollinger International while helping themselves to $60 million as well. Now his “vast fortune is at risk” and he faces what may be “considerable” jail time. What is incredible about this is that apparently no individual shareholder ever complained. It was reportedly an SEC lawsuit that started the fall of Black. And how was the case prosecuted? According to CNN Money: "The case centered on an alleged corporate victim. Unlike the Enron case, this one resulted in no major loss of jobs, worker suffering or company collapse. Nearly all the prosecution witnesses were granted immunity or allowed to plea bargain. … The prosecution had originally hoped Radler would be their star witness. In exchange for a reduced jail sentence, Radler pleaded guilty in 2005 to fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. But near the end of 25 hours of closing arguments, the prosecution changed course and instead labeled him as a 'criminal' and ‘fraudster.’"Let’s see, no charges made by shareholders, but, nonetheless, an alleged “corporate victim,” all the prosecution witnesses granted immunity or allowed to plea bargain, the star witness against Black doing so badly that the prosecution labeled him an “criminal and fraudster” during 25 full hours of closing testimony. We are well on our way to criminalizing business and businessmen. Did Black run his newspapers so badly that a slew of shareholders complained? Weren’t questionable transactions were okayed by his board? Nonetheless, he is likely going to jail and will be stripped of part if not all of his fortune. Black is no small fish. He was a major Canadian media player, and by all accounts he was a good if ruthless businessman. According to CCN, “In the early 1990s, Hollinger controlled 60 percent of Canadian newspapers in addition to hundreds of dailies worldwide, including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Montreal Gazette, Britain's Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post.” Of course, Black was more than this, much of it obnoxious. A headline grabbing “bad boy” of Canadian media, he was a man who - like too many successful entrepreneurs in this day and age - was an arrogant wheeler dealer. It was obvious long ago that he believed in the rewards of free-markets for himself but used his newspapers to promote socialism and government programs for everyone else. In fact, Black is a kind of poster child for the hypocritical power elite – a wealthy strata of business people who promote rules and regulations for you and me but not for themselves. On a more mundane level, what Black may mainly be guilty of is the misfortune to run a public company at a time when government prosecutors have seemingly declared a virtual war on private enterprise. There, the larger issue is the definition of “public” and “corporation.” That’s one you will not find discussed in most media, major or alternative. But both are artificial concepts. Boil it down to the basics and here is what went on: People gave Black money and he made more money with it and created jobs and successful newspapers. Not a single individual complained, apparently. But Black faces punishment because a government regulatory agency decided he was a “racketeer” and prosecutors and a “jury of his peers” decided that Black had enriched himself egregiously. This is the sort of conduct that the marketplace and civil lawsuits should have decided. Instead, the exquisite calibration of what can and cannot be done with public companies will continue. Government and government prosecutors will decide. This is not a day for celebration. As for Black, the punishment that is bound to cut the most is the knowledge that he considered himself one of the “insiders” when in fact he was not. -Anthony Wile