AP News, March 6th, 2007
Former media baron Conrad Black says he is confident a jury will clear him of fraud at his upcoming trial in the United States.
Black and three other former executives of his Hollinger International media empire are due to stand trial later this month in Chicago, charged with looting $80 million from shareholders. They deny wrongdoing.
"I know I am innocent of the allegations against me, as does almost anyone who actually knows me, and I am about to prove it," Black wrote in an article published in Tatler magazine. Excerpts from the article, which hits newsstands Thursday, were released Tuesday.
"I have never had the slightest doubt of the outcome of a fair trial, knowing that the judgment of the legality of my actions will lie in the hands of 12 American citizens, in one of that country's greatest cities, more or less at the bar of Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Darrow," he wrote.
Prosecutors say Black used shareholder funds to pay for shopping excursions for his wife, Barbara Amiel, a two-week vacation in Bora Bora, refurbishing his Rolls Royce and other personal expenses.
The Canadian-born press baron, who was elevated to Britain's House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour, formerly ran Hollinger International Inc., which owned the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Telegraph in London and The Jerusalem Post.
Black said he had required "great psychological resilience and considerable financial resources and agility" to withstand the pretrial pressure he was under.
"Barbara and I have struggled through a great many difficulties almost every day," he wrote.
Black criticized coverage of his case, saying the presumption of innocence had been "a risible fiction until we got to the court."
"When we are acquitted, the question of the justification for this orgy of self-directed largesse will finally replace, as the real issue, the malignant canard of possible criminal behavior by the present defendants," wrote Black, long noted for his verbosity.
Once the trial is over, Black said, "Barbara and I look forward to returning to London, when I have been vindicated, later this year and then dividing our time between London and Canada."
