| Conrad Black starts prison sentence |
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| Written by Adrie van der Luijt | |
| Tuesday, 04 March 2008 | |
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The former media mogul Conrad Black has started a six and a half year sentence in an American low security prison.
Lord Black of Crossharbour, the former Hollinger International, Inc. chairman and chief executive, spent his first hours as inmate 18330-424 in the barracks at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, 50 miles from Orlando, on Monday night. At the weekend he entertained friends at his Florida mansion with his wife, the newspaper columnist Barbara Amiel, before commencing his term on charges of fraud and obstruction of justice. In an opinion piece published by a number of Canadian newspapers he described his situation as "terrible thing to be falsely accused and wrongly convicted, even of a fraction of the original charges, and unjustly incarcerated." Director of Finance Online's Richard Northedge worked for Conrad Black as The Daily Telegraph's Deputy City Editor. Before sentencing, he gave his views on Black's conviction in his blog The Edge on our site: "Conrad Black’s sin was to run public companies as though they were private. He took money from the till like a corner-shop owner financing his Friday night out, rather than submitting the necessary chits. And his punishment is six years or more inside an American prison. I worked for Black for 12 years as deputy City editor of the Daily Telegraph; I lunched with him and visited his home. He was tough but fair – keen for his newspapers to make profits but loathe to interfere editorially. His corporate governance standards were dire: he stuffed the board with cronies, ran a pyramid of quoted companies registered in different countries that he controlled through majority stakes, and did questionable deals with related parties. Other UK publishers had questionable share structures too but they did not run into the American governance zealots. Had Black owned all the shares in his companies there would have been no governance issue; had they all been UK-registered he would have been ousted rather than prosecuted. It is hard to imagine British authorities bringing a case against a wayward director and impossible to imagine such a sentence. Black’s arrogant attitude would have done nothing to impress his judge but had he been a wimp he would not have built a business worth millions. His mistake was to spend a few of the dollars on himself rather than inflate his pay and spent the money personally, not corporately. As it is the governance police have claimed a scalp – and reduced the value of the business to almost nothing." Read Richard Northedge's blog on Director of Finance Online four times a week. Visit the blog archive here. Related articles
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