Update on Conrad Black trial:
Mike Reed, former chief of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., and the Birmingham company's lawyer have been center stage this week in the Chicago fraud trial of fallen media mogul Conrad Black.
Reed testified Monday that when CNHI bought a group of Hollinger papers in 2000, Hollinger lawyer Mark Kipnis asked the company to wire $9.5 million to the executives as the deal closed.
But Reed and CNHI attorney Thomas Barnes Henson testified they refused, saying the payments weren't in the contract.
"It just didn't seem like the right thing to do," Reed said.
On Monday and Tuesday, Reed and Henson testified they wanted such an agreement from Hollinger International. But they said they had no interest in getting a non-compete agreement from Hollinger Inc., a Toronto holding company that Black used to control the larger, Chicago-based Hollinger.
According to a November 2000 memo introduced in court Tuesday, Black and F. David Radler, his longtime No. 2 man, were to get $4.3 million each, while Hollinger executives John Boultbee and Peter Y. Atkinson were to get $450,000 each and Kipnis himself was to get $100,000.
On Wednesday, Henson testified he saw Kipnis write the note directing payment of $9.5 million to Black and three other men from the sale of several small newspapers.
On cross-examination, Michael Swartz, the lawyer for Kipnis, suggested that there was no other record in the closing papers of the $9.5 million payment. "I think that's correct," Henson said. Henson left the witness stand Wednesday. More on the story.
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