The rest of the Radler - Wednesday

The first eight paragraphs of a report from Paul Waldie of the Globe and Mail detail what Mr. Radler is revealing now that he's being questioned by Benito Romano, defense counselor for Peter Atkinson. It starts off with disclosing that "David Radler told jurors in the Conrad Black trial this morning that he did not know Hollinger Intenational Inc.'s share price jumped after it announced it was selling most of its Canadian newspapers in July, 2000." Mr. Romano asked him again, and he denied knowing about it once again, even though he owns 9,000 shares directly and a lot more indirectly through his interest in Ravelston.

Csr. Romano's strategy is revealed in a Canadian Press report, webbed by 680 News. "Defence lawyer Benito Romano says Atkinson was busy hammering out legal details of a blockbuster deal with CanWest Global Communications in 2000 when Hollinger's board approved disputed payments of tens of millions of dollars to Black, Radler and others." At its end, it also mentions Radler's self-stated lack of knowledge of the jump in the value of Hollinger Int'l shares.

Mr. Waldie was interviewed on BNN, at 1:40 PM ET. When reporting on the "surprising admission" that Csr. Romano had gotten out of Mr. Radler, the COO of Hollinger Int'l at the time of the CanWest sale, Mr. Waldie disclosed that Csr. Romano asked Mr. Radler more than twice about the share price leap. It's now Ron Safer's turn, for defendant Mark Kipnis. The prosecution alleges that Mr. Kipnis' $100,000 bonus was a payoff for facilitating the allegedly illegal transactions; the defense argues that Kipnis got it for his good work as a lawyer. Mr. Radler all but admitted that the latter explanation was the true one.

When co-host Pat Bolland asked how the other lawyers are doing when compared with Eddie Greenspan, Mr. Waldie started off with the general strategy used by the defense team: whichever lawyer goes first takes the most time at cross-examination, and the others follow in his wake. The other lawyers' styles are "very different" than Csr. Greenspan's: they ask more yes/no questions, they're more document-centred, and they're less aggressive than Eddie Greenspan is. Mr. Radler is behaving on the stand today. Mr. Waldie finished by stating that the defense's call about Conrad Black taking the stand has yet to be made.

An updated version of the same report by Ms. Maurino has some detail on Csr. Safer's cross-examination in its lower middle. He "began his cross-examination by saying his client wasn't involved in purchases and sales. As the Chicago-based in-house consel for Hollinger International, he was in charge of pensions, insurance and property leases." In other words, the legal paperwork related to the allegation wasn't under Mr. Kipnis' purview.

The latest AP summary, webbed by WQAD.com, concurs with what Mr. Waldie reported in his interview: "The star witness at Conrad Black's fraud trial says 1 of Black's co-defendants saved the Hollinger International media empire millions of dollars in legal fees and earned $150,000 in bonuses." It also discloses that Mr. Radler testified that the bonuses were unrelated to the sale to CanWest.

Ms. Maurino's reports above have been revamped into a newer one, with new information added, as webbed by Canadian Business. It not only repeats the above information about the real reason behind the awarding of bonuses to Mr. Kipnis, it also says that Mr. Radler answered in the affirmative to this question from Csr. Safer: "'Each time the government asked you, you said the bonus had nothing to do with non-competes and was solely based on Mark Kipnis's hard work and the money he saved Hollinger on legal fees'..."

The second page of the report notes Mr. Radler's behavior today, and adds some of Mr. Radler's earlier testimony as background.

A more detailed AP report is out, as webbed by Forbes.com, and it also has details on the revelation that Mr. Kipnis did not receive any special compensation for the legal work he did for the allegedly illegal transactions. At its end, it notes that Csr. Safer "stressed that Kipnis had no experience in or knowledge of the newspaper business when he joined Hollinger International and no reason to distrust Vogt's judgment in ordering the money transferred to Toronto." Specifically, he asked Mr. Radler if the latter had ever told Mr. Kipnis not to trust Mr. Vogt as of January 1999 (the time when the $2 million was transferred) and Mr. Radler said that he hadn't.

The Reuters report has additional information on Csr. Romano's earlier cross-examination, some of which veered in on who approved the non-compete payments for Jack Boultbee and Csr. Romano's client, Peter Atkinson: "Romano noted that as the deal neared closing Radler -- who has pleaded guilty to one count of fraud in the case and faces jail time -- forwarded to Boultbee and Atkinson advice from an accountant that non-compete payments were free of tax in Canada.... 'You sent him (Atkinson) the fax because you thought that he had a personal interest, did you not? You had discussed giving a portion of the non-compete to Peter by that time?' Romano asked." Mr. Radler answered that he didn't know because he couldn't put definite dates to each.

The updated version of the above report has added testimony, in a subsection starting on page 3 entitled "No Reason To Panic." It discloses that, during his cross-examination, Csr. Safer asked Mr. Radler to go back in his mind to "early 2001 when Hollinger was forced to disclose the payments in its financial statements to government regulators and shareholders." After being asked about his emotional state, Mr. Radler replied, "'Sir, they signed them (the financial statements), didn't they?'" Then, snapping to when Csr. Safer suggested that he unconsciously agreed with the defense's theory regarding the individual non-compete payments, he responded, "'No, sir, that's your version.'"

And finally, another AP report, webbed by the International Herald-Tribune, discloses near its end that Mr. Radler's flat testimony, that the audit committee would never have approved the individual non-compete agreements, was met with a question from Csr. Safer of why he would say in August 2001 that Gov. Thompson had approve them. "'Did you think you could convince the governor that he approved something he didn't approve?'" Safer asked. When Mr. Radler replied that he didn't know, Safer snapped back, "'But you thought you'd give it a shot.'"

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Mark Steyn's entry ealier today in his Conrad Black trial blog reviews the prosecution's opening address and compares what's promised there to what has been actually delivered. He concludes that it all hinges upon four phone calls...and nothing more. Jeffrey Cramer's opening address is webbed here.

(What's interesting about this conclusion is what it would imply if Conrad Black and the others are convicted. The "bureaucratic mentality" would come back with a fury, and the business phone may very well become antiquated. "E-mails; E-mails; E-mails" would be de rigueur, and more personal modes of communication would be rendered anathema except in more old-fashioned/secure part of the business world.

(Something to consider: this would mean that a lot of law-abiding executives would act, perhaps out of advice from lawyers, as if they were shady characters. It could be that the use of the RICO act [originally intended to prosecute mobsters] against tradespeople has a self-fulfilling-prophecy aspect to it, unless used judiciously and with knowledge of what it takes to be a law-abiding executive nowadays - let alone what it would take to be law-abiding in the world described in the previous paragraph.)


Alan D. Gold, a lawyer who writes for the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog, has a take on plea bargains being used in exchange for testimony, when sentencing is postponed until after the testimony is given, which hints at an agency problem inhering in them. In order to assure that the leniency of the agreed-to sentence is kept, the witness (the agent) has a lot of incentive to sing a tune that the prosecution is sympatico with, rather than the truth as it was.

Also, Douglas Bell, in his top-stories watch for Toronto Life's Conrad Black trial blog, has highlighted a feature article by Jennifer Wells, comparing David Radler to Enron's Andrew Fastow. Ms. Wells' article, which reminds us that the jury has yet to hear from Paul Healy, can be found here.

To get back to Mr. Steyn, his latest entry hints that what got the prosecutorial machine rolling in the first place was the impression that non-compete payments were inherently illegal, when in fact they're common.