TIME: The Extravagant Fall of Conrad Black

The Extravagant Fall of Conrad Black

When the Sherbrooke Record, a small Canadian paper, fell into the hands of a young Conrad Black and his partner in 1969, few could have predicted the new owner's meteoric rise. But just decades later, Montreal-born Black — still with David Radler, that right-hand man, at his side — had built a media business stretching the globe. And as chairman and chief executive of Hollinger International, then publishers of newspapers from the Chicago Sun-Times to London's Daily Telegraph, Black reveled in his status. Boasting swank homes in London, New York and Florida, he and his glamorous wife swaggered between glitzy parties on both sides of the Atlantic. Black even cashed in his Canadian citizenship to become a British Lord in 2001.

These days, Black and Radler are still closely tied — but for very different reasons. Beginning Wednesday, a federal court in Chicago will hear charges of fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice against 62-year-old Black. And after cutting a deal with prosecutors, Radler will take the stand against his former boss. Black — whose reign as chairman and CEO had ended by 2004 — denies all charges, but if found guilty, could spend the rest of his life locked up. "I know I am innocent of the allegations against me," Black wrote in Tatler magazine recently. "And I am about to prove it."

Prosecutors — led by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, fresh from sealing the perjury conviction of White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby — allege Black used the publicly owned Hollinger as a piggy bank, skimming off millions of dollars of shareholders' money. Three other former Hollinger execs are also accused. Central to the case are charges that after the sale of many of Hollinger's titles beginning in 1998, Black and the other execs pocketed fees paid by the newspapers' new owners to ensure Hollinger wouldn't compete with the titles it had dumped. That money should have been divvied among shareholders, prosecutors say; Black insists the payments were above board.

Black is also accused of billing the firm for eye-watering personal expenses, from seats at the opera to using the company jet for a vacation on the Pacific island of Bora Bora. Add that, prosecutors say, to a $40,000 claim for his wife's birthday celebrations at a plush restaurant in New York. "This is one of those cases where there's so much wrongdoing, in so many different areas, that the most difficult thing is keeping track of it all," said Jay Eisenhofer, a U.S. lawyer who will argue a separate civil case against Black, in a BBC documentary on the mogul broadcast Tuesday. "On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the worst example, I think you'd find that Conrad Black is probably somewhere around 50."

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Motion seeks names of Black jurors

By Phil Rosenthal
Tribune media columnist
Published March 17, 2007


Lawyers for the Chicago Tribune on Friday filed a motion asking U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve to reconsider her decision to seal the names of 12 jurors and eight alternates selected in the trial of former Chicago Sun-Times owner Conrad Black.

St. Eve declined to hear the motion until Monday, when the trial's opening arguments also are scheduled to be heard.

"There is no justification for an anonymous jury," the filing says. "The full names of all prospective jurors already have been read aloud in open court during , making the retrospective sealing of the ultimate jury list both an ineffective and inappropriate measure. But more importantly, sealing the list of juror names in this public criminal case is an extraordinary measure that is not warranted under the circumstances and violates the public's First Amendment and common law right of access."

The trial has drawn considerable international media interest because Black is a major public figure in Canada and Great Britain. His empire once made him the world's third-largest English-language newspaper publisher.

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