Conrad Black
RES351
April 18, 2012

Conrad Black
Conrad Black, born in Montreal in 1944, is a well known publisher, author, and the was the owner of Hollinger International, the third-largest global newspaper group in Canada, and now a convicted felon. Lord Black, now called after he became a member of the UK’s House of Lords, was accused and convicted of allegedly defrauding Hollinger International in 2007. There were a total of 17 charges brought against Black, but his legal team reduced those to a total of four and Conrad was sentenced to six and half years in prison. It was thought that Black would go to a posh, minimum-security prison, but he spent 29 months in a Florida correctional prison, confined with child-molesters and Mafia dons. Back in 2003, the board at Hollinger accused Black of running a multi-million dollar “corporate kleptocracy” of the company, and filed suit again him. Other charges followed and included wire and mail fraud, tax fraud, and obstruction of justice, just to name a few of the charges. The companies and newspapers that were under Black’s ownership, spent millions of dollars trying to retain their losses, keep their advertisers, and firing of executives and board members associated with these crimes. As mentioned above, Black was convicted of four of the 17 charges in July 2007, sentenced to 78 months, fined $125,000 and ordered to forfeit $6.1 million. All but two of the charges were dismissed or overturned when his lawyers appealed the convictions all the way to The Supreme Court and won their appeal. Conrad was released after only serving 29 months in the Florida prison, maintaining his innocence of any wrongdoing the entire time. There were still two charges that were outstanding as far as the court was concerned concerning Lord Black. In June of 2010, he was convicted and sent back to prison for misappropriating $600,000 and removing boxes of personal items that the court ordered him not to take from his Toronto office. He was sent to prison to be released 4 months later by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals due to the vagueness of the laws on the convictions. The Blacks will move back to their 11 acre estate in Toronto where he will become a full time writer. He says “But I’m not going into publicly held companies anymore,” he says with a mock shiver. “The regulators, the minority shareholders, all that crap. Oh, I can’t stand it.” University of Phoenix, 2011, p. 6 The life of Conrad and his wife will be reduced a bit because of the limitation, what he calls it, of money. There was unlimited supply before, wealth beyond wealth for them. A guess of his wealth is approximately around $80 million and he says, “I can live on $80 million,” he notes with an arching of his eyebrow. “At least I think I can.” University of Phoenix, 2011, p. 6

References:

University of Phoenix. (2011). The Convictions of Conrad Black. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, RE351 - Business Resources website.
Charges at a glance. (2007, June). CBCNews, (), . Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/black_conrad/charges.html