Tim Worstall

Lord Black.

So they’ve charged him, Lord Black that is:

Lord Black and John Boultbee, the former Hollinger chief financial
officer, both face eight counts of mail fraud and wire fraud. Mark
Kipnis, the former company secretary, faces nine similar counts, and
Peter Atkinson, the former executive vice-president, faces six counts.
Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a
$250,000 fine.

I have no idea, of course, whether he’s guilty of anything at all. But the charges themselves are revealing. Wire and mail fraud are catch all charges in the US system. Using a phone or fax, or the USPO, to commit a crime are crimes in and of themselves. But it is rather more normal to be charged with such a crime rather than just the use of communications to commit one.

Is this evidence of a weak case? Or an easily provable one (for we all know how difficult fraud cases are to prosecute)?

In

One response

  1. james C Avatar
    james C

    I have not read the story in detail, but remember that the principal allegation was that Hollinger sold Newspaper titles and that Black and his fellow directors, as opposed to Hollinger, received millions in return for an agreement not to compete with these titles.
    In other words, part of the sale proceeds were diverted to the directors. There is also a long list of items where Hollinger paid for Black’s personal expenditure-millions on some document from the US presidential library

    Reply

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