‘Star witness’ Radler is the real criminal: Black
The only criminal ever present in the Chicago courtroom hearing Conrad Black’s trial was the former media baron’s longtime business partner, Black told the CBC Thursday.
“If there is any criminal in this case, the government’s supposedly ’star witness’ is the criminal,” Black said, pointing the finger at Montreal-born David Radler, a close associate for 36 years who shared ownership of a corporation with Black to control their newspaper empire.
The prosecution in Black’s fraud trial, which began March 14, alleges Black, 62, and three other former Hollinger executives were involved in a scheme to illegally siphon $60 million US from the newspaper holding company.
But Black, who was also born in Montreal, told the CBC it was, in fact, Radler who was the real author of a scheme to swindle Hollinger shareholders and not the other way around, as Radler has testified.
“Certainly, the defendants are innocent,” Black said, dismissing the charges against him as “nonsense.”
He also told media Thursday he was confident ‘no jury in the world’ would convict him after Radler finishedhis two weeks of gruelling testimony. ‘A sweetheart deal’
Black’s lawyers have repeatedly advanced the notion Radler was the mastermind, showing in cross-examinations that Radler concealed information from Hollinger officials and then lied when questions were raised.
Lawyers also focused on Radler’s plea bargain with the prosecutors “a sweetheart deal,” they said that would see him serve only six months in a Canadian jail for implicating Black as well as Peter Atkinson, Jack Boultbee and Mark Kipnis.
Radler pleaded guilty to one count of fraud in exchange for a 29-month jail sentence and a fine.
Still, Black said he was confident the real story was emerging at the trial.
“I’ve said from long before these charges were laid and it was obvious that some charges were going to be laid that the charges would be nonsense and I still say they’re nonsense,” he said. “We’ve now had eight weeks of it and they’re still nonsense.”
Black faces 17 charges, including racketeering, mail fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion. The others face charges of mail and wire fraud, as well as tax fraud.