Sir Conrad Black’s Noble Embezzlement Case

Sir Conrad Black (also styled Baron Black of Crossharbour, a title conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth), a man who once owned most of the newspapers in Canada, the Jerusalem Post, grocery stores, mining companies, and many other investment properties, is in court for embezzling up to $52 million (with several co-defendants) from his sole remaining newspaper property, the Chicago Sun-Times.

Black’s famously haughty demeanor isn’t helping his case. The former media baron, who was once expelled from the most presitigous Canadian prep school (Upper Canada College in Toronto) for selling stolen exams with prices differing by the status of the purchaser, has been exposed as a devotee of Louis XVI:

Former newspaper baron Conrad Black compared himself with privileged aristocrats of the French revolutionary era as he wrestled with the high cost of using his company plane, U.S. federal prosecutors said Monday.

“There has not been an occasion for many months that I got on our plane without wondering whether it was really affordable,” Black was quoted as saying in papers filed in his racketeering and fraud case.

“But I’m not prepared to re-enact the French revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility,” he is quoted as saying in an August 2002 e-mail after questions arose about his use of the plane for a vacation.

“We have to find a balance between an unfair taxation on the company and a reasonable treatment of the founder-builder-managers,” he allegedly added. “We are proprietors, after all, beleaguered though we may be.”

Black’s alleged remarks were quoted in an 81-page outline of the government’s case against him and three other defendants, submitted Monday to U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve in Chicago.

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