Media Roundup: All Over A Memo?

Despite the Conrad Black trial being, in the words of The Walrus magazine editor Ken Alexander, cocooned in a "yawn-inducing miasma of non-compete agreements," the stories posted overnight on it are increasing in number:

1. Rudolph Bush of the Chicago Tribune starts off his latest report with a mention of a memo, written in August of 2000, that was sent to Conrad Black himself. This memo is intended by the prosecution to show that Mr. Black was involved, knowingly, in the allegedly fraudulent non-compete agreements to both Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee. Mr. Bush also makes the point that "Atkinson's lawyer has argued the payments were intended as bonuses but were structured as non-competition payments for tax purposes." This defense isn't argued by Conrad Black's lawyers, as the prosecution is not alleging illegality of the Canwest non-compete payment to Mr. Black himself.

2. From the Toronto Star, Romina Maurino's latest report, which sums up the testimony under both direct and cross-examination, so far, by Beth DeMerchant.

3. The Niagara Gazette has a brief bio of Matthew B. Mock, a lawyer representing Mark Kipnis, in Don Glynn's column "A Line Or Two."

4. Legalbrief Forensic has a write-up that's available to subscribers only.

5. Peter Brieger, of the National Post, has a write-up that begins with: "A Toronto lawyer claims she was 'pressed' to say a pair of Hollinger International executives inserted themselves into a business deal so they'd get tax-free bonuses, which are at the centre of criminal charges laid against Conrad Black and a trio of his former colleagues." The pressure was applied to her by the special committee of Hollinger, Inc. in 2003, one headed up by Richard Breeden. [The National Post's version quotes some of her testimony at the end, including this bit: she "acknowledged her work on part of the CanWest file 'violated the most basic rule of tax law -- get[ting] help. I don't know tax law and I shouldn't have ventured into that area.'"]

6. From the Brandon Sun Online, a note that Paul Saunders, former counsel for Henry Kissinger, is expected to testify today, providing a break from Ms. DeMerchant's taped testimony.

7. Ms. DeMerchant's testimony is mentioned in the second-last item, comprising a single paragraph, in today's Boston Globe "Business In Brief" roundup.

8. Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star points to that same (fax) memo mentioned above, one sent August 9, 2000, as a possible smoking gun for the prosecution: "Who hatched the idea for Hollinger International Inc. senior executives Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee to receive $2 million payments from the landmark sale [to CanWest]?...A fax sent to Conrad Black by Atkinson...may help answer that vexing question, which is at the heart of criminal charges against Atkinson and Boultbee...."

9. Mary Wisniewski has two pieces webbed in today's Chicago Sun-Times. The first recounts the point, made in cross-examination of William "Bud" Rogers by Michael Schachter, that Csr. Rogers and his firm were not involved in the sale to CanWest until Mr. Atkinson asked him in. The second reports on Ms. DeMerchant testimony yesterday. It mentions that she disclosed that she thought the payments should be non-compete paments, not bonuses, while being examined by prosecutor Eric Sussman, and that she switched over to Csr. Rogers' advice about disclosing the payments "[a]fter reviewing U.S. securities law in April 2001." A sidebar in the latter report mentions that both Csr. Saunders and Ms. DeMerchant will both be heard from today, and that yesterday's testimony was "at times so tedious that U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve and lawyers joked about needing coffee during an afternoon break."

10. Paul Waldie also has two reports, both webbed by the Globe and Mail. The first starts off by noting that the "[j]urors in the Conrad Black trial will get to see the first big-name witness in the case next week." The "big name" is Richard Burt, a member of the audit committee and a board member of Hollinger Int'l since 1994, when it was known as American Publishing. "According to court filings, Mr. Burt has alleged that one of the defendants, Peter Atkinson, admitted misleading the audit committee. The admission allegedly came in November of 2003, when Hollinger was conducting an internal review of the payments...." Mr. Waldie further reports, in his first piece, that Mr. Atkinson denied making that "admission." The second of today's write-ups focuses on Csr. Saunders, and his expected testimony today: it will be "about his role in raising concerns about non-competition payments that Lord Black and three other former executives of Hollinger International Inc. received in 2000. " At the end of his second report, Mr. Waldie mentions that the next two witnesses, after both Csr. Saunders and Ms. DeMerchant are finished, will be Hollinger auditor Marilyn Stitt and, of course, Richard Burt.

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Mark Steyn's latest entry in his trial blog ends with the opinion, "if I were Conrad, I’d lay off the Nazi cracks." The body of it contains an explanation of why the case is so mind-numbingly tedious: the prosecution is reaching for it. "This trial is like a bizarro version of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon: nary a witness seems to get within a hundred and six degrees of Conrad Black..." He also notes that the prosecution seems hung up on a "highly idiosyncratic corporate structure" - in other words, the unusuality of that structure makes Mr. Black's perhaps-normal business activities appear strange.

The technical difficulties mentioned by Mr. Stein were the focus of another entry in the "Black Board."

More broad in scope is the latest "Lexington" column in the Economist. The indictment of Conrad Black is mentioned as one of the elements of the neoconservative movement, as a whole, suffering "a grand exercise in public humiliation."