Richard Siklos, author of Shades of Black, on the key deal that brought down Conrad Black.
Lord Black, who is appealing his conviction, said he was cleared of the "central charges" in the case, nine of them in all, including payments relating to the sale of most of his Canadian newspapers in 2001 and to the champagne-soaked lifestyle he enjoyed, in part, on his expense account.
That is true, but one scheme that he and three colleagues were convicted of was blatant and actually kind of dumb.
I'm referring to what was known in court as "APC," short for American Publishing Co. This was the name of the chain of hundreds of small-town newspapers that David Radler built up over the years and began selling off in the late 1990s when financial pressures pinched Hollinger International, the Chicago-based public company where he was president and Lord Black was chief executive.
While much of the trial focused on so-called non-compete agreements that were signed when newspapers were sold off, APC involved an agreement that Lord Black, Mr. Radler and the others signed that was made up out of whole cloth.
For his share, Lord Black received $2.6-million. But there was no actual transaction pegged to APC — at the time those non-competes were drawn up, the division consisted only of one remaining weekly paper in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. (a copy of which prosecutors purposefully handed to jurors to peruse and pass on). And how do you agree not to compete with your own subsidiary anyway? A huge image of the cheque sent to Lord Black for his share was projected on a giant screen in the court. The prosecutor also pointed out that the Mammoth Lakes paper was subsequently sold to a private company owned partly by Lord Black and Mr. Radler for $1.
Those dramatic touches aside, the unearthing of the APC deal was among the more striking reasons Lord Black and Mr. Radler were kicked out of Hollinger in the first place back in November, 2003.
Remember? Lord Black's initial reaction to the disclosure of these and other unauthorized payments alling $32-million was that it had been some kind of administrative error by underlings and that he would simply pay back his share of the money and move on. That's what Mr. Radler did, along with Peter Atkinson, a colleague who had also received some of the funds. But, then, Lord Black abruptly changed course and refused to pay, saying his own investigation of the payments showed that they were legit and he was going to fight to keep control of the company he built.
Four years later, the outcome of that fateful decision is that he has been disgraced, is on the brink of heading to jail, but at least can find comfort in the fact that the jury did not find evidence to convict him on most of the payments in question.