Conrad Black Found Guilty Of Fraud
In a Chicago court case which lasted in excess of 3 months, once powerful media mogul Conrad Black has been found guilty of defrauding the Hollinger Group he once ran. Black, along with a number of co-accused, has been found guilty of taking millions of dollars from the group and now faces up to 35 years in a US jail.
While there are plans for an immediate appeal, the recent court ruling is a massive blow.
Conrad Black has been renowned in business circles for his lavish lifestyle and appreciation of the good things in life. He has invested millions into property, hosted numerous lavish parties costing in excess of $100,000 each and also mixed with some of the most powerful people in the world. This is a man who is used to living under the most extreme of pressures, shown by the fact that he wrote and published a 1,000 page biography on Richard Nixon, while the court case was going on!
The guilty rulings centre around the sale of local papers in Canada, and secret agreements with the buyers, stating that Hollinger would not compete with them. In exchange for these agreements it is claimed that Black and his co-accused received payments of millions of dollars - in effect defrauding the shareholders of the group.
While a maximum 35 year jail sentence sounds harsh, if Black had been convicted on all charges he would have been looking at a sentence possibly in excess of 100 years! Oh how the mighty have fallen.
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