A Dark View of the Black Prosecution
Former media baron Conrad Black is scheduled to stand trial next year on charges that he and other executives looted Hollinger of $84 million while Black was chairman and chief executive of the publishing company. Alykhan Velshi, a lawyer working in Washington, D.C., for the conservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, calls Black’s prosecution a “tragedy.” In an op-ed in the New English Review, Velshi decries his prosecution:
The last three years have not been kind to Conrad Black: his media empire and his reputation are in a shambles, his various properties are being auctioned off by court-order, and his assets and family jewelry are being confiscated – all this, and Black has yet to be convicted of a single crime.
. . . There is an insidious little worm that has crept into the legal system, an iconoclastic mentality that is distorting the rule of law. Focused less on securing justice than on bringing down the high and mighty, all the while pandering to the politics of envy, it affects the entire system of corporate governance . . . .
This is highlighted by three developments in the law of corporate governance: the concentration of power in the hands of minority shareholders, the criminalization of technical regulatory violations, the abandonment of the rule of law in favor of aggressive prosecutorial tactics, and the entrenchment of a culture that penalizes success.
Much of Black’s troubles stem from the fact that he and his wife led a lavish lifestyle . . . . Black ignored the fact that shareholders and directors owe special legal and equitable duties to one another, as well as to the company. But this mistake is not criminal, and it does not justify the punitive lawsuits being filed against him, the pre-trial seizure of his assets, or the damage being done to his reputation. Judges who think nothing of stripping Black of his livelihood, iconoclastic prosecutors . . . and a bunch of greedy shareholders trying to scavenge whatever is left over – this is the tragedy of the Black prosecution.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/09/15/a-dark-view-of-the-black-prosecution/
Do you agree with Alykhan Velshi's comments?
3 comments:
Yes, absolutely.
Velshi, what are you doing on this blog? LOL!
Fraud, racketeering, stealing, etc? The bottom line is that Fitzgerald will send Black to prison. If you do the crime, then you will do the time!
Mr. Black got rich by taking advantage of weak lame businesses. Now the same will be done to him. Look Daddy Bush stole the oil rights from Howard Hughes while Hughes was ill so look for the same to happen to Daddy Bush. These guys work in a business of feeding off the weaker person. As for Mr. Black and his money let's face it he needed it for his attorneys and his businesses weren't doing that well anyway.
Post a Comment