Who is Conrad Black from Chicago?

[goclark]

It was breaking news that he was found guilty of doing something in Chicago.

I only caught the tail end of it.

[acmejack]

1. He is Lord Black caught playing nasty games with the Chicago Sun-Times

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1039

[goclark]

2. He is in big trouble with the law

today.

Thanks for the bio.

Saw Nixon stuff and I knew he was one more of the criminals.

[3trievers]

3. crook

At one time he owned 63% of Canadian newspapers but he got the repuglican illness of arrogance and greed.

[applegrove]

4. He is a Canadian Billionaire who moved to Britian and took over

Fleet Street and became a lord. He then moved on to the USA and tried to become a big player there. I think he owned one of the New York rags for a bit. Richarc Perle was one of his pals. He is a neocon pal and wrote a much admired biography of F.D.R. - having the money to buy all FDR's papers. Next it suddenly became obvious that his empire was crumbling and he & the wife (a conservative intellectual also from Canada name Barbara Amiel) had been spending corporate profits loosy gooosy. And some emails came out that embarrassed Perle and Black.

[jim3775]

5. He renounced his Canadian citizenship

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2001/05/19/black_010519

[applegrove]

7. Oh - our wonderful leader Chretien was involved somehow - could

it be Canadians are not allowed to accept "titles". OR some such thing. He had to renounce his Canadian citizenship to get something. I forget the details.

[Spazito]

12. I was never so glad to see his fat ass leave Canadian soil

and him leaving his Canadian citizenship behind. I don't think his hollow title as 'his lordship' is going to save him or his equally despicable wife from their 'just desserts'.

[applegrove]

13. Was ridicoulus that he wanted the laws changed to suit him. Glad

Chretien took the stand he did.

6. BBC is doing a lot of reporting on him

excerpt:

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Conrad Black, the onetime press magnate who built Hollinger International Inc. into the world's third-largest publisher of English-language newspapers, was charged with helping steal $51.8 million from the company.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aAotMwRZ_WhQ&refer=home

[applegrove]

9. He is well known in Britain & Canada, the wife is a journalist and he

the Billionaire owner of newspapers and a writer of the odd book. I think he was a small fry in the USA because you have so many of them.

[RepublicanElephant]

8. uh-oh... he's got patrick fitzgerald on the case!

http://www.940news.com/nouvelles.php?cat=23&id=111767

The man leading the investigation - Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois - told a news conference in Chicago on Thursday that "officers and directors of publicly traded companies who steer shareholders' money into their pockets should not lie to the board of directors to get permission to do so."


hee-hee

[JohnyCanuck]

10. The pompous prick just sued prominent Canadian author, Peter Newman,

for libel for saying in a book that he engaqed in criminal acts.

From a Toronto Star story:

According to the statement of claim, Black says he is libelled by a passage in the book that reads, "He engaged in a wide range of criminal acts spanning many years, including mail and wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property and money laundering."

The statement of claim says Newman "falsely and maliciously published" the words on pages 404 and 405, and: "The plaintiff pleads that the words are defamatory of the plaintiff and have brought the plaintiff into hatred, ridicule and contempt and the plaintiff has suffered damage."

It goes on to say that Newman's conduct "has been vindictive" and "the misconduct was planned and deliberate," he intended to "enrich himself at the expense of the plaintiff," and also "inflict severe economic harm on the plaintiff."

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1132181413708&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist971715457606&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
(registration required)

For more gossip on the lawsuit check out The Toronto Star's columnist and media critic Antonia Zerbisias' comments in her blog

As for the libel suit against Newman for his autobiography Here Be Dragons, here's what the Star's report left out:

Much of the offending chapter -- titled, "Black Magic: How Conrad Black became a Weapon of Mass Self-Destruction" -- concerns Black's well-known legal problems.

The chapter also includes what the National Post referred to as "salacious details" of the Blacks' sexual behavior. Newman is a former family friend who hired Barbara Amiel (Black's wife /jc) as a columnist in the 1970s. The lawsuit describes Newman as acting in a manner that was "vindictive, high-handed, contemptuous and demonstrated reckless and deliberate disregard and even enthusiasm for the damage that might be done to the good name of" Black, the newspaper reported.

Ironically, Maclean's, where Newman is a columnist, published a juicy excerpt of the book, one that attacked Amiel, a year ago.

Why did Conrad marry Barbara? For several reasons, according to his most intimate confidants: for one, she was his intellectual soulmate; for another, she introduced him to the delights of oral sex.

http://thestar.blogs.com/azerb/2005/11/newsmaker_of_th.html

[daleo]

15. Barbara Amiel could not be Conrad Black's soulmate

It would imply that they each had souls, or at least they still had possession of them. The oral sex part is easy enough to believe, though.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. It was Amiel's Imelda Marcos-like egomania that started the investigation

LORD BLACK’S downfall dates to an ill-judged Vanity Fair interview by his wife, the columnist Barbara Amiel. In August 2002, Mrs Amiel showed off her shoe collection and said: “I have an extravagance that knows no bounds.”

That helped to antagonise Christopher Browne, a key Wall Street investor in Lord Black’s empire. Mr Browne began to ask more and more questions about how the press baron ran the company that owned The Daily Telegraph.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1877909,00.html

HE WAS the schoolboy cheat who grew into a flamboyant press baron. She was the glamorous columnist with a taste for luxury. Together they lived out a modern parable of hubris and retribution.

Lord Black of Crossharbour and his wife, Barbara Amiel, revelled in their decadence with an appetite matched only by the depths of their detractors’ glee at their fall.

As Margaret Wente, a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, wrote as the extent of Mr Black’s alleged fraud was emerging: “Only a few hundred women in the world can afford to dress like Mrs Black, and Mrs Black may not be among them.”
...
A stunned visitor from Vogue magazine reported that Lady Black had so many designer outfits, housed in walk-in cupboards, that “the overflow has to be kept in yet more closets downstairs off the gym”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1877904,00.html

[daleo]

18. This should prove interesting

Will she be pulled into the case? Whatever else you might say about her, she is highly intelligent, so I have a feeling that she knew plenty about his dealings. No innocent bimbo.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Hard for the company's Vice President and Director to be kept out

Barbara Amiel Black
Vice President, Editorial and Director of the Company

Mrs. Black has served as Vice President, Editorial since September 1995 and as a Director since February 1996. Mrs. Black is the wife of Mr. Black. After an extensive career in both on and off-camera television production, Mrs. Black was the editor of The Toronto Sun from 1983 to 1985, a columnist of The Times and senior political columnist of The Sunday Times of London from 1986 to 1994 and The Telegraph from 1994 to 1998.

She has been a columnist of Maclean's magazine since 1977. Mrs. Black also serves as Vice President, Editorial of Hollinger Inc. and Hollinger Canadian Newspapers G.P. Inc. ("HCNGP"), the general partner of Hollinger Canadian Newspapers, Limited Partnership, a public reporting company in Canada, and as a Director of Hollinger Inc., and The Jerusalem Post.

http://www.mideastjournal.com/hollinger2.html

With David Radler pleading guilty and cooperating with the prosecution, I think she's in the firing line for sure.

[Spazito]

11. A despicable man who is in concert with such notables as

Perle and Kissinger. He is an ex-Canadian, good riddance to bad rubbish, who's ego and arrogance were just begging to be taken down and, be damned, Fitzgerald did just that!

Here is a link to an article in the Chicago Tribune about it and him:

Black, Hollinger Execs Indicted for Fraud

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-hollinger-fraud,1,580922.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Edited to correct spelling error

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

14. George Will likes him...

...there was a $25,000 one day speaking fee Will accepted from Black, but failed to mention in a piece where he was kissing Conrad's fat ass.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0102-10.htm

[Spazito]

16. I swear, it is positively incestuous how every trail leads to

the same grouping of slimeballs. Black is tight with neocons like Perle, Will and Black, Black and Kissinger, etc. It is absolutely creepy, imo.