Crossposted at: The Next Agenda
What is it about Conrad Black that causes others to imitate his multisyllabic rhetoric? He's laid down the fog of war. The battlefield is obscured with the smoke of vocabulary so seldom used, and sentence structure so convoluted, that the audience is well confused before the first fact can be found. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation pundit Rex Murphy's commentary was almost unintelligible last night. Everywhere I look and listen the commentators are showing off their prowess with the thesaurus.
So many sycophants are using this means of expression to excuse Black's behaviour that I'm tending to believe the accounts of the story with the lowest word counts. And I think the jury will feel the same way too. This is the way three card monte is played at the Empire club. It won't work on the streets of Chicago.
Here's a story that I think lays the case out fairly clearly. The Independent Online
In what looks set to be the media trial of the decade, he faces 14 counts of fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice, accused of looting more than $80m (£41m) from Hollinger International, the stock market-listed part of a media business that was once the third-largest in the English-speaking world.
Also charged in the case are John Boultbee, Hollinger's former chief financial officer, former executive vice-president Peter Atkinson and former general counsel Mark Kipnis. The co-defendants all pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud, mail fraud and tax fraud.
Rather than running the company properly for the benefit of all its shareholders, Lord Black used Hollinger as a personal piggy bank, prosecutors allege, diverting millions out of the company in bogus "non-compete" deals and other fees. The court will also hear juicy details of a lavish lifestyle that included holidays to Bora Bora on the company jet, a $54,000 birthday party for Lord Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, at an exclusive New York restaurant, and much more.
*emphasis added
This is good too. From the Times Online Curtain lifts on the final fight...
At the centre of the prosecution case are so-called "non-compete payments", which were demanded by Lord Black as he sold hundreds of community newspapers to new owners during his reign as Hollinger's chief executive. The money that accompanied these promises not to set up rival publications was allegedly pocketed by the media tycoon rather than passed on to the company shareholders.
Last night I read a 6,000 word review of a 25,000 word essay that appeared at Dooney's Cafe website Books in Canada and Black by Brian Fawcett. Black is such an enormous presence to the Canadian writing world that he's got them all upset.
Brian Fawcett, like many writers, claims no expertise.
Because I'm not an expert in corporate law and my accounting abilities are so dull that they make sorting through the mess at Black's Hollinger corporations a little like trying to repair a wristwatch while wearing hockey gloves, I've been trying not to have an opinion about whether Black has committed criminal acts against his shareholders and against the laws of the land. It'd be much easier to let the courts decide that for me during the next several months--or as it will likely turn out, years.
Unfortunately there's not much good writing on business in Canada. But Fawcett's got it right when he says:
We need to remember that the word "entrepreneur" is the French term for "enter and take", and how short a trip it is from there to "break and enter" and other forms of criminal theft and/or anti-social aggression.
So over the next little while pay close attention to the essential element of this case:
Did Black take the money that all Hollinger shareholders should expect to receive on their investment?
And believe the person who is most plain speaking.