Toronto Life: The Trial of Conrad Black

April 2007 Archive

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 30, 2007 by Douglas Bell

After weeks of andante, the case turns lively this week as the prosecution tempo accelerates toward its crescendo and climax. With David Radler in sight, the defence continues its cross-examination of Marie-Josée Kravis, followed, according to reports this morning, by audit committee chairman James Thompson. Coverage on the weekend was highlighted by a feature profile of Radler in the Chicago Tribune and a summary piece in The Times of London by Black–Amiel biographer Tom Bower. The Trib featured quotes from long-time Black adjutant John Fraser, previewing at least one aspect of the defence’s coming character assassination of Radler: “He was probably the easiest person to bully at Hollinger because he was such a bully himself,” said Fraser. “If you stand up to a bully, they’re the first to cave in. The prosecution team probably scares him out of his wits” (i.e., the quisling weasel is lying to save his skin). As for Bower, whose slasher bio of the Blacks puts him squarely in the prosecution camp, one senses his pleasure in reporting that:

Only Her Hairdresser Knows

Posted on April 27, 2007 by David Livingstone

When Barack Obama, presidential hopeful and Men’s Vogue cover boy, was recently on the Late Show With David Letterman, the host was much impressed by how the guest was dressed. “This is a tremendous suit,” said Letterman. “I’d vote for that suit.” Watching from the couch, you couldn’t tell just how wonderful the suit must have been, but it was impossible to miss how well it was worn, the way that Obama, as he took his seat, made the last-minute adjustments to ensure he was flashing a bit of cuff.

Black Watch: Today's Top Stories

Posted on April 27, 2007 by Douglas Bell

The prosecution’s version of that other legendary Chicago combination, Tinker to Evers to Chance (Burt to Kravis to Thompson), continues with the arrival today of Marie-Josée Kravis, who shared audit committee duties with Burt and Thompson. It’s clear that the prosecution is presenting the board members as a sort of praetorian guard, ensuring David Radler’s safe passage through a ferocious cross-examination. The prosecution’s mantra, no doubt, will be: “Yes, he’s a snitch. Yes, he’s a weasel. But look whose evidence he’s corroborating.” So far, so good. The silvery-maned Burt effectively parried Ed Genson’s efforts at tarnishing his sterling reputation. The Post’s Peter Brieger, whose reporting of courtroom dialogue is far and away the best among the daily press corps (what’s left of them), wrote:

Double Standards

Posted on April 27, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Perhaps it’s the first sign of trial-induced dementia, but lately I’ve been struck by certain paradoxical parallels between the travails of Conrad Black and the travails of Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz is the former deputy secretary of defence credited with having set out the policy priorities that led to the American invasion of Iraq. A couple of years ago, George Bush pegged him as the new president of the World Bank. Lately he’s been in hot water over exerting undue influence to get his girlfriend (who worked for the bank at the time) a raise. But of course the real reason is a fundamental disagreement between the Bank’s international bureaucracy and Wolfowitz over policy. The faceless ones are angry because he seems less interested in development than in developing standards of “governance” to combat corruption. That Wolfowitz engaged in an arguably corrupt practice made him a sitting duck, but such defenders as David Frum suggest that one needs to keep the bigger picture in mind:

The Best Defence

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Roger Martin

Last week, I argued that shareholders are deluded if they think that boards, company auditors, company lawyers and regulators can collectively stop ill-intentioned executives from getting unjustifiably high compensation. There are no laws or audit rules against greed, even naked greed. Boards could in theory curtail greed, but any wily CEO who puts his or her mind to it can make sure that the board doesn’t resist the value extraction. And clever, greedy executives can come up with all sorts of clever value-extraction mechanisms, like personal non-compete payments, to facilitate their wealth accumulation.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Douglas Bell

While I’m sure the disinclined will suggest I’m fomenting a tempest in a teapot, this morning’s offerings deliver a plethora of gossip, substance and observation, all of which suggest a gathering momentum in the Trial of the Millennial Epoch. First there is the continuing testimony of former director and audit committee member Richard Burt. A patrician from central casting, Burt spent yesterday either damning the accused with their own words—reading verbatim for the jurors e-mails from Black—or parrying defence efforts to put him in league with the Creaseys, Sukonicks and DeMerchants of this world. As the Star’s Jennifer Wells reported, “Burt did not buckle. About the crucial sale of a host of U.S. community papers, noted in the company’s annual filings for 2001, Burt snapped, ‘It says they were brought to the audit committee as related-party transactions and they weren’t.’”

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Douglas Bell

What’s past is prologue, and with the arrival of Richard Burt, Shakespeare’s bromide will inform the approach of both sides to his testimony. The prosecutors have already tipped their hand, drawing Burt out as to the relationship between the protagonists and the nature of their alleged conspiracies.

What are the Odds?

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Some time after nine o’clock yesterday morning, I spied Albert Schultz, who played Conrad Black in the great man’s biopic, marching along Bloor Street between Howland and Albany.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Douglas Bell

If you’re one of those people who finds themselves sniggering uncontrollably at the following joke: What do you call 10,000 (circle profession of choice a) lawyers b) accountants) at the bottom of the ocean? Answer: A start, then the Trial of the Millennial Epoch is probably your version of Just For Laughs. Where the lawyers were there for your amusement last month, this week it’s the accountants. But as the Star’s Jennifer Wells points out in her lead this morning, at least one accountant has reason to be proud:  “When Marilyn Stitt gets back to Toronto, all you folks should greet her at the airport with buckets of flowers and boxes of chocolates. Unlike those wussy lawyers from Torys who preferred to testify via videocam from the comforts of their home office, Stitt, a career accountant at KPMG Canada, actually had the you-know-whats to fly here and take the stand at the Conrad Black trial yesterday in the hopes of answering that seminal and always energizing question: What is it that you auditors do, precisely?” 

Money out the Window

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Patrick Gossage

In a sense, it’s not just Conrad Black who’s on trial but many in a generation of what Peter Newman, in his 1981 second volume of The Acquisitors: The Canadian Establishment, called “The Inheritors.” Here’s how Newman set it up:

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Douglas Bell

The Globe and Mail scores two knock-downs over its prime competitor in the Black trial derby—the National Post. One appeared on the front page of Saturday’s Globe, where James Adams got a first crack at Black’s new biography of Richard Nixon. While careful not to suggest that Black’s reflections on Nixon amount solely to a self-serving parable, Adams quotes one passage, the meaning of which could hardly be clearer:

Honourable Discharge

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Realizing as I do that the very mention of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada fairly shouts at even the most curious reader “Avert your eyes!” I have to ask: How is it that the Honourable Conrad Black P.C. can renounce his citizenship in Canada, yet remain a member of a body that requires the following oath in order for prospective members to assume their duties:

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Not since Monty Python blessed us with the Gumby sketch, in which the main character announced over and over again “my brain hurts,” have we seen comedy like this.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 19, 2007 by Douglas Bell

This morning’s barrage left me pondering two separate, though not entirely unrelated, notions. First, Godwin’s Law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies ), which states that the longer a discussion goes on, the greater the probability that a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler will arise. Second, the theory of cognitive dissonance, a psychological term that describes the tension resulting from having two conflicting thoughts simultaneously, or engaging in behaviour that’s contradictory to one’s own beliefs.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Douglas Bell

For the moment, Conrad Black’s defence rests on confusion sown by conflicting advice from two law firms. Is it just me, or does that fact evoke more incredulity than understanding?

Business Brief: Survival of the Fattest

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Roger Martin

It wasn’t a great week for Darren Sukonick, the Toronto securities lawyer whose taped deposition has lately been the main event at the Black trial. He was beat up pretty soundly by the defence lawyers and reporters for refusing to testify in person in Chicago, among a litany of other things. I know Sukonick because he did a securities deal for a company of which I am chairman. The press descriptions of him are pretty much accurate: he is smart, hard-working, intense and ambitious. Having worked with him, I can’t help but feel considerable sympathy for him.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Yesterday’s rumpus in Room 1241 turned on a discrepancy between two lawyers and two law firms: Darren Sukonick of Torys (a big fish in the Toronto pond) and William Rogers of Cravath, Swaine & Moore (a bigger fish in New York’s much bigger pond).

Spin Report: Message control

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Patrick Gossage

While the Black trial has (perhaps mercifully) fallen into the inside-pages ghetto, Barbara Amiel Black still occupies prime media real estate in the fawning Maclean’s. In communications situations of this sort, where reputations are on the line, “controlling the message” and “controlling the image” are all-important objectives. A recent Amiel column tried to do both, but failed.

Fits and Smarts

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Somebody at a more august publication than www.conradblacktrial.com (hard to believe, I know) has written something so much smarter than I, at this moment, can possibly muster that all I can do is offer a link.

Early Daze

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Douglas Bell

There have been many superior movies whose subject is the courtroom: Inherit the Wind, The Caine Mutiny, Judgment at Nuremburg, And Justice for All, The Verdict. I even liked A Few Good Men, although I know any number of discriminating types who would gag at my even mentioning it. The point is all of these references and more drift around somewhere in the ether between our collective ears. They influence how we think about trials happening in real time. O.J. Simpson’s trial, it could be argued, was about the corrupt cop—a standard lynchpin of legal drama.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Douglas Bell

A pall of silence has fallen upon the trial of Conrad Black. Or at least that’s how his nibs would describe it. The great unwashed are losing interest. The British papers have all gone quiet, and what reporting there is comes from rewriting wire copy in an office somewhere on the island of Manhattan. The Americans lost the scent ages ago.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Douglas Bell

One of the reasons homo sapiens open the newspaper in the morning is so that we might, however briefly, however tangentially, identify with the plight of our fellow man. “Only connect,” suggests E.M. Forester’s epigraph from Howard’s End; and in that spirit I ask who among us doesn’t connect with Darren Sukonick? Among other things, there’s the business of leaving a phone message or e-mail we wish we hadn’t. The difference between happy anonymity and public disgrace is all there in the push of a button. Send or delete? Send—oops! This passage from Paul Waldie neatly describes the particular circle of hell to which Sukonick has descended.

Legal File: Video Hits

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Alan D. Gold

It is not completely clear how and why the Torys lawyers were able to get away with testifying by means of videotaped depositions. The prosecution talked about their right “not to appear in a foreign court,” but it is difficult to believe that lawyers in a major law firm with international associations could not have been compelled to attend in person if the prosecution had really wanted it. It’s likely the prosecution felt their evidence was better presented via videotape, if for no other reason than there could be no unwanted surprises in cross-examination. Once videotaped, the evidentiary concrete would be hardened and set before the trial began, and there would be no risk of those “foreign” lawyers—whom the prosecutors probably viewed with suspicion to begin with—suddenly answering questions in a way that harmed the prosecution and assisted the accused.

Peers the Thing

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Douglas Bell

As the videotape continues to whirr away, marking like grains of sand through the hourglass the prosecution’s diminishing returns from Darren Sukonick, a mind wanders to other precincts. In this case, London, where the term Disgraced Peer (DP) has been getting a bit of a workout lately, what with Lord Black on trial and Lord Archer mounting a comeback.

Black Watch: Today's Top Stories

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Flip Wilson made a career in comedy suggesting that his naughty behaviour was the result of satanic intervention—as in “the devil made me do it.” Were he still with us and following the Trial of the Millennial Epoch, Flip would, in the last day or two, have had several weeks’ worth of material handed him on a platter.

Business Brief: The Big Lie

Posted on April 11, 2007 by Roger Martin

Who should be on trial in Chicago for perpetrating fraud? That’s the question last week’s shenanigans at the Black trial raised for me. There is a better answer than Conrad Black: it’s the governance theorists.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 11, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Many years ago, I was one of those “accident victims” swatted off the back of my bike by a truck. Decades later, I read the witness statements, which ranged from descriptions of the murderous truck driver howling with bloodlust as he gathered himself to run me over again, to my having thrown myself under his innocent wheels in a suicidal passion. The point being, same happening, different takes. Reports on Day 14 of the Trial of the Millennial Epoch (TOME) offered a similar phenomenon. The same set of events written up in headlines on two continents revealed Lord Black as either a geriatric freak who, as a result of his suffering from bronchitis, almost drowned while snorkelling off Bora-Bora (Globe and Mail), or as a terrorist target urged by his concerned colleagues to use the company jet to fly to Bora-Bora where he would strip to the waist, revealing himself to be a geriatric freak, etc. (Telegraph). While I realize that the TOME is more than an exercise in epistemic haymaking (men’s lives are at stake), that headline writers from these august publications could have such wildly varying perspectives on what actually matters makes you wonder, what on earth are the jurors—17 ordinary Chicagoans, good and true—making of all this?

Blame the Lawyers

Posted on April 11, 2007 by Douglas Bell

A couple of weeks ago, Michael Schachter and Ronald Safer (lawyers for Atkinson and Kipnis respectively), in the course of their opening statements, disparaged two lawyers associated with the Toronto firm Torys: Darren Sukonick (still there) and Beth DeMerchant (resigned). Torys already paid $30 million to Hollinger International to settle allegations that they failed to act in the firm’s best interest when representing three companies controlled by Lord Black during the now infamous CanWest sale. No doubt playing to the galleries, Mr. Schachter was quoted as saying that Sukonick, who struck a deal with U.S. attorneys to testify via videotape, “will not come and look this jury in the eye.” Mr. Safer, playing essentially the same hand, asked the jury rhetorically, “Beth DeMerchant makes mistakes but Mark Kipnis is charged?” This week, Sukonick’s and DeMerchant’s testimony for the prosecution, as well as the defence’s cross-examination—all 12 hours’ worth—will be played for the jury.

Mind Reader

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Douglas Bell

In the midst of another dark dank day brimming with Fred Creasey, Bora Bora (could an island have been more aptly named for its current evidentiary assignment) and motions for a mistrial, comes one of those extraneous details that breaks through the fog like the mid-morning sun.

Crossing Delaware

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Douglas Bell

A big deal was made yesterday over defendant Jack Boultbee’s plea for a mistrial and request that he be afforded a separate trial. The issue turns on a line of questioning from Peter Atkinson’s lawyer suggesting to Fred Creasey that his client had worked with Creasey to get to the bottom of the non-competes. From Boultbee’s point of view, this is prejudicial in that the jury might infer that Atkinson was a Boy Scout and Boultbee wasn’t. St. Eve quickly rejected these pleadings. The Toronto Star reported that her response was in line with an earlier ruling, which “rejected a bid by Black’s co-defendants for separate trials…promising to instruct the jury to avoid ‘spillover guilt.’” The use of the term “spillover guilt” here is telling, in that the only person in the room whose credibility in this matter has been assessed and found wanting is—three guesses—Conrad Black.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Beyond a failed effort by Jack Boultbee’s lawyer to engineer a mistrial, thereby winning for his client a trial separate from his co-defendants (more on that in a later post), yesterday’s proceedings, and the reporting thereof, were reduced to a sort of crude show and tell. Fred Creasey’s days beneath the proscenium arch are drawing to a close, and whatever future he saw for himself as a prosecutorial witness for hire has receded well beyond the visible horizon. In order to counter the jury’s impression that Creasey didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about, prosecutor Julie Ruder was reduced to an AV display worthy of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop. The Globe’s Paul Waldie reported it thusly:

Spin Report: Waiting for Radler

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Patrick Gossage

Last week’s brief controversy about who paid how much for what in the famous Bora-Bora jaunt failed to lift the trial from the legal mud in which it wallows. The trial has grown so boring that CBC radio updates simply state that Black is there because of non-compete payments and leave it at that.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Douglas Bell

After the tsunami of reports last Friday summarizing Fred Creasey’s dubious performance on the stand when faced with evidence that in fact he did know about the non-competes and that he’d overcharged the company for Conrad’s now near-mythic flight to Bora-Bora, the weekend was relatively quiet.

Guy Walks Into a Mac's…

Posted on April 5, 2007 by Douglas Bell

What with Fred Creasey supposedly flip-flopping around like a landed bass on the bottom of the boat, I thought I might change the subject (I would, wouldn’t I, convinced as I was by Creasey’s performance yesterday). To date I’ve avoided writing about Christie Blatchford’s coverage of the trial. In fact, until today I’d more or less avoided reading her altogether. Christie Blatchford is, like the weather, one of those subjects in which there is little percentage in taking a position. You might not like it, but the weather couldn’t care less, and neither, given the inevitability of it all, does anybody else. An editor at the Globe wrote me early on in the trial after Christie’s first effort from Chicago:

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 5, 2007 by Douglas Bell

“Bora Bora did not fit my allocation methodology,” said Fred Creasey, former Hollinger International bean-counter-in-chief.

Chasing Amy

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Once again, from the dank hallways of the Everett McKinley Dirksen Building, 219 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois, arrives a missive from a friend known only as The Courtstalker:

Spin Report: Operation Charm, Day 10

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Patrick Gossage

image for Spin Report: Operation Charm, Day 10

In 1976, McClelland & Stewart released Conrad Black’s book version of his McGill thesis, Render Unto Caesar: The Life and Legacy of Maurice Duplessis, a sometimes flattering probing of the legacy of the infamous Quebec premier. Young and attractive, the then proprietor of the Sherbrooke Record was of course available for interviews, and as the producer of a Montreal-based CBC evening show, we booked him. He was thoroughly engaging, and as an intellectual, historian and social animal, obviously remains so today.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Douglas Bell

A day off from court proceedings produced a wave of enthusiasm and creativity at the Star. Rick Westhead reports on the importance of body language in the courtroom. Normally, this would elicit groans and yadda yaddas, but Westhead dug up some interesting examples, including a quite telling moment between defence attorney Edward Genson and prosecutor Ed Siskel. Jennifer Wells reports on the ongoing discrepancy between the amount of money the prosecution alleges Black et al defrauded shareholders ($60 million) and the amount widely reported in the press ($84 million). It’s one of the better efforts so far at explication and clarification.

The Odd Couple

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Douglas Bell

image for The Odd Couple

It’s a cheeky question, I know, but is Conrad Black to American commerce what Sanjaya Malakar is to American entertainment? The parallels between the pilloried peer of the realm and the pilloried American Idol contestant are eerie. They both favour wacky costumes (if you count Sanjaya’s hair as part of his “costume”). They both have an almost cartoonish (some might say touching) deficit of self-awareness. And it might be argued that they are both pawns in a bigger game rigged to make each look in his own way a fool—or worse. Saturday’s New York Times laid out in detail a plot by the always mischievous Howard Stern to hijack and possibly derail the American Idol juggernaut. Stern has over the last while encouraged his listeners to vote for the painfully off-key Malakar in an effort to destroy the show’s credibility. Fox, spurred by the fact that Malakar has remained on the show weeks after its own judges recommended against him, felt compelled to respond to all this by saying that Stern’s efforts in no way distorted the results of the voting. Uh-huh.

Much a ’Do About Nothing

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Douglas Bell

The ever-intrepid boyos at Frank mag are onto a story so big, so central to the case, it could only appear in their august pages. I speak, of course, of Lady Black’s coif:

Business Brief: Oh, Geez… More Non-Competes

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Roger Martin

The last time Fargo appeared prominently in the national press was a decade ago, when the brilliant Coen brothers movie won two Academy Awards. The North Dakota city was back in the news last week as the prosecution trotted out Lloyd Case, President of Fargo-based Forum Communications. To recap, Forum bought a Hollinger paper for $14 million, a price that included non-compete payments directly to Black and his associates. Probably chosen by the prosecution because of his folksy, accessible home state and the modest size of the transaction, Case opined that he wasn’t actually afraid of Black competing with him after the sale of the paper but was perfectly happy to include the personal non-compete agreements in the contract because they didn’t change the overall price he was going to pay. Good for the prosecution to establish that the non-compete agreements were unnecessary and came directly and solely out of the hide of the Hollinger shareholders.

Bowdlerizing Bower

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Douglas Bell

As promised, I’m revisiting the Tom Bower–Mark Steyn imbroglio. Steyn’s beat, as it were, is the world of irreconcilable political opinion on just about any subject. Promoting himself on three continents as a “one man global content provider,” he’s either preaching to the converted or damning the infidels, fluffing the former and enraging the latter. There’s really no in-between. And it’s hard to tell who needs him more, his allies or his enemies. Steyn understands this game better than most. Because he’s trying to satisfy the bottomless appetite of his constituency’s need for self-affirmation (I am against it/I am for it, therefore I am), by definition, his currency is prevarication and exaggeration.

Confusion, Thy Name Is Non-Compete

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Douglas Bell

image for Confusion, Thy Name Is Non-Compete

We’re back to a full court press on the Black case, and once again, the confusing matter of non-competes reigns. The headline on Paul Waldie’s piece in the Globe reads “Black Trial Zeroes in on ‘Unusual’ Request for Funds,” while the Post’s main news story by Peter Brieger reads “Non-Compete Fees ‘Clever But Not Illegal.’” Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Andrew Clark tried to cut through the fog by pointing out that the prosecution’s slide show helped clarify things:

Two Lords a Leaping

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Douglas Bell

image for Two Lords a Leaping

Last week, we reported on a column in The Times of London comparing the plight of Lord Black to that of former English Tory minister Jonathan Aitken, a convicted criminal and fellow Nixon biographer. It has since been brought to our attention that, in addition to the creepy similarities mentioned in our previous post, Aitken happens to be the grandnephew of the late New Brunswick–born British newspaper baron Max Aitken, a.k.a. Lord Beaverbrook. As another Canadian nobleman, Count Floyd, was given to saying, "That’s scary stuff!"

The Tedium is the Message

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Douglas Bell

The abstruse litany on non-competes having reduced journalists to glazy-eyed indifference (or maybe that’s just me), the sideshows dominated the weekend’s print bilge. The Observer served up former Black protégé Martin Newland getting off a plane in Toronto and passing through immigration, where—get this—a colonial customs officer tells him he thinks Conrad’s going down. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the article for you, but here’s a hint: Newland is skeptical.

Legal File: Nine days later: who’s winning?

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Alan D. Gold

Anyone reading the press reports of the evidence at the Conrad Black trial could be forgiven for not knowing who is winning. Both sides are proving facts that they correctly feel support their side. But both sides cannot be right.

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