Unlucky Friday the 13th for Conrad Black
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Former media mogul Conrad Black’s conviction today on three counts of fraud and one count of obstructing justice is prompting varied and noteworthy reaction from SFU business, ethics and crime experts. American prosecutors had taken Black and several other executives at Hollinger International Inc., a newspaper chain and publicly traded company, to court for defrauding the firm of millions. Black was the company’s CEO.
Robert Adamson, executive director of the CIBC Centre for Corporate Governance and Risk Management at SFU’s Segal Graduate School of Business says the decision has enormous implications in Canada. Hollinger International is based in Canada but Black was tried in Chicago. “The decision calls into question whether cases of corporate misconduct are being treated seriously enough in Canada,” says Adamson. “Also, the conviction of in-house and external lawyers for Hollinger along with Black signals a whole new layer of legal responsibility needing attention in corporate governance.”
Robert Adamson, 604.657.1213 (cell), radamson@sfu.ca
Mark Wexler, an SFU business ethicist at Segal Graduate School of Business, says the decision sends a strong signal that the days of turning a blind eye to elite white-collar crime are over. “It used to be that elite white collar criminals were admired as robber barons. Corporate fraud was punished only at the middle management level.” But Wexler also says, “The courts, as in this case, are still only able to get elite white collar criminals on obstruction charges and not the backroom dealing and collusion that are the real crimes.”
Mark Wexler, 778.782.7846, wexler@sfu.ca
Neil Boyd, an SFU expert on Canadian criminal law, can comment on the importance of this conviction in the wake of the decisions in the Enron and Tyco corporate fraud cases. Noting that Black faces decades in prison and millions in fines, Boyd says, “If Black could have foreseen his future he wouldn’t have wanted to give up his Canadian citizenship to become a Brit.”
Neil Boyd, 604.947.9569, nboyd@sfu.ca