Richard Burt: The Examination Continues

BNN had an interview with Paul Waldie, aired at 1:55 PM ET, in which he said that Richard Burt is still under direct examination. Mr. Burt was asked about the non-competes, for which he denied all knowledge, and Barbara Black's 60th birthday party. He was at it, and he testified that he had assumed it was a private event. He did sign a disclosure document regarding one of the non-competes, even though he claimed he didn't remember any of them; this was brought out during the direct examination. The prosecution, acticipating the cross-examination, asked him about it: he said he had signed without careful review because he had trusted the management. Mr. Waldie concluded by noting that the direct examination seems to be almost over.

680 News has webbed Romina Maurino's write-up of Mr. Burt's testimony. It begins with: "Former Hollinger director Richard Burt says he approved disputed 'non-compete' payments to Conrad Black and other executives after being repeatedly told they were requested by a buyer of Hollinger International newspapers and failure to agree to the payments would have been a 'deal breaker.'" Mr. Burt believed that the birthday party was a private event because, in his own words, "it 'wasn't a forum for conducting business.'" In addition, he testified that the non-compete agreements he had heard about, when approving the sale to CanWest, were for Conrad Black and David Radler only; the ones for Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee, he did not hear about until a month after the CanWest deal was formally pitched to him.

[An updated version of Ms. Maurino's article, webbed by 1130 News, has a five-paragraph addition in the middle of it, which contains Mr. Burt's testimony about the complaints from Chris Browne of Tweedy, Browne. She quotes an E-mail from Mr. Black, sent in 2003, "calling shareholders claims that Hollinger was in trouble 'complete confection' and 'an attempted public relations Pearl Harbour.'

"'Please don't attach much credence to this sideshow,'" he told Burt in an e-mail. "'There is no financial distress in our group.'"]

Mr. Waldie's own write-up, webbed by the Globe and Mail, starts off with an outline, from lead prosecutor Eric Sussman, of what David Radler will testify about. Csr. Sussman gave it during a hearing when the jury was absent; he said that Mr. Radler will testify about what went on in Ravelston, the parent company of Hollinger Inc., and he implied that Radler would testify as to motive.

Bloomberg has webbed a report by Joe Schneider and Andrew Harris, which fills in some details about Mr. Burt's testimony under direct examination. Mr. Black and Mr. Radler got non-compete payments from CanWest "because they were viewed as a 'threat' by CanWest's former Chief Executive Officer Izzy Asper, said Burt, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany." He also testified that he didn't see why Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Boultbee should be paid any non-compete fee at all on the deal. The report also fills in the rest of the no-forum-for-business quote from Mr. Burt: "'I didn't see any business conducted [at the party],'' adding that the audit committee never saw the bill for [it]."

[The updated version of the same article notes that Mr. Burt testified that "as late as June 2003, he didn't know the executives received noncompete payments from five other deals, including newspaper sales to Birmingham, Alabama-based Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. and Forum Communications Inc. in 2000." It also has some detail on the start of the cross-examination of Mr. Burt. When Peter Atkinson's defense counsellor Benito Romano showed him documents that recorded the non-compete payments to the defendants, Mr. Burt answered "'I did not review all these footnotes,'... adding the information in the company's financial statements, which he signed, was wrong. 'It says the audit committee approved those payments and the audit committee did not.''']

The report from Andrew Stern of Reuters contains more copious quotes from Mr. Black's E-mails. Its last quote is from Mr. Burt himself: "'I was beginning to have a fear of being embarrassed as the controversy grew,' he responded [to a question from Jeffrey Cramer.]"

Mr. Burt's testimony under direct examination, and what the prosecutors hope it will prove, has also made The Independent. The author of the article covering Mr. Burt's testimony, Stephen Foley, ends with the ironic obervation that the prosecution is the side which is hoping that star power will overcome unearthed technical flaws in its case. Another report webbed by a British newspaper, The Telegraph, summarizes Mr. Burt's direct-examination testimony too. It's by Simon Litterick, the reporter who usually covers the trial for the Telegraph.

The Associated Press report, webbed by ABC7 Chicago, also focuses exclusively on the testimony elicited under direct examination. It has the most detail on Mr. Burt's direct-elicited testimony of any news report webbed tonight, not only with some new quotes from Mr. Black's E-mails from the time he was CEO of Hollinger Int'l, but also with several quotes (some new) from Mr. Burt's own words when on the stand.

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Mark Steyn, when discussing yesterday's part of Mr. Burt's testimony, made the interesting point that a corporation with a decentralized management structure and a small head office means (in addition to the usual benefits pointed out by securities analysts) that "there aren’t a lot of minions for the prosecution to lean on to plea-cop."

(Speaking of security analysts, there is a hint in that quote for them, given today's time of legal troubles...)