Richard Burt Has Taken The Stand

The defense is finally finished with Marilyn Stitt, and the prosecution has called up Richard Burt to testify. The first part of Romina Maurino's updated report on today's testimony details what he's said so far, as elicited by Jeffrey Cramer, the same prosecutor who delivered the opening address. Mr. Burt testified that he saw Conrad Black and David Radler as close-knitted teammates: "'I saw those two gentlemen in particular as being a team and in tandem,' Richard Burt, who is both a former U.S. diplomat and Hollinger director, told the court. 'I understood they were representing themselves and senior management (when they spoke at board meetings). I always found they were a very close team.'"

He also testified that the documents upon which he had to assent or object to were very complex, so he tended to trust, or "'assumed,'" that management gave "'a full description of the affairs of the company.'" He has yet to mention Peter Atkinson. Bloomberg's report, written by Andrew Harris and Joe Schneider, adds to the picture by relaying, "[t]he board, not having any staff, depended on the 'good faith of management' and the information it provided." (Only the top third of their report discusses Mr. Burt; the rest of it deals with Ms. Stitt's testimony and background to the case.)

The Reuters write-up, by Andrew Stern, reports that Mr. Burt testified that the board was not aware of Mr. Black's and Mr. Radler's ownership of Horizon Publishing, a company to whom Hollinger International had sold newspapers. Board members' knowledge of that fact "could have changed the outcome of the board's approval of that deal." Mr. Burt also testified that this possibility of non-approval would have resulted from knowledge that the transaction was a related-party one. "Such deals involving company executives, Burt explained, are called 'related party transactions' and require independent scrutiny by the board." The report ends with Mr. Burt flatly denying that Conrad Black had told him anything about a $2 million non-compete payment from the "American Trucker transaction," where Hollinger Int'l sold American Trucker and Mine and Quarry Trader to Intertec Publishing, in February 1999.

The sale to Intertec, now Primedia, was completed as of May 1998, with the $2 million non-compete payment agreed to at the same time, and the $2 million was diverted to Hollinger Inc. on January 27th, 1999, according to the indictment (p. 10.) An earlier witness, Peter Laino, testified about this transaction, as mentioned in this Globe and Mail report (now available to "Globe Insider" subscribers only.)

The Belleville News-Democrat has webbed the Associated Press article on Mr. Burt's initial testimony, which mentions that the first sale to Horizon was completed in November, 1998. (According to p. 14 of the indictment, that sale agreement was dated March 31, 1999.) He testified that the sale to Horizon and the payment of some of the non-compete fee associated with the sale to Horizon (24% of it, according to the indictment) were all related-party transactions; thus, knowledge of both would have "been important" and "mattered" (respectively) to him as an audit committee member. It ends with Mr. Burt testifying that, to his knowledge, Mr. Black and Mr. Radler had never disagreed with each other.


A PDF copy of the indictment itself can be found by clicking this "Superseding Information" link, found in the "US v. Black, et al." table on this DOJ page.

As of now, I haven't been able to find out whether the Horizon transaction date discrepancy in the AP report was due to the reporting, or to the the Mar. 31 date being a finalized date in a months-long deal process, or to a memory inconsistency on the part of Mr. Burt.

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Douglas Bell of the Toronto Life trial blog has announced that he and Albert Schultz, the actor who played Conrad Black in a CTV TV docudrama entitled "Shades of Black" that's mentioned here, have a two-dollar bet on the trial's outcome for Mr. Black. Mr. Schultz bet on "not guilty of all charges," and Mr. Bell agreed to cover the bet.