Conrad Black goes to jail
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:19 pm...a shame his wife isn't going as well, what is the betting she will find herself yet another source of funds before long.
Conrad Black, the disgraced British peer and media tycoon, declared with typical defiance today that it was “not the end of the world” as he swapped his champagne lifestyle for a prison cell in Florida.
Still protesting his innocence after being convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, having looted his company of millions of dollars, the bombastic 63-year-old even invoked Sir Winston Churchill as he lashed out theatrically at his accusers.
“They will have their fleeting moment of brutish triumph,” he said in a final interview with the National Post of Canada, on the eve of his incarceration.
“A moron who actually seriously looks at this case sees that it is a crock and I expect it will ultimately be determined to be so. But to the extent that it isn’t so determined, it will seem to be an injustice - and victims of injustice are not normally despised people.”
Barring a successful appeal, which is not due to be heard until June, Black has been ordered to serve six and a half years in the prison’s low-security wing as inmate number 18330-424, and must serve at least 85 per cent of his sentence before he qualifies for parole.
Accompanied by his wife, the British journalist Barbara Amiel, Black was driven the 210-mile journey from his beachfront mansion in the millionaires’ playground of Palm Beach - where neighbours include Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger and Rod Stewart - to the bleak prison complex, located among ranchland and quarries beside a rural road punctuated by stalls selling boiled peanuts and fruit.
He had been ordered by a judge to report by 2pm latest. He arrived on the dot of noon, sweeping in to the compound in the back of a sports utility vehicle with darkened windows. Beside him was his wife, who was driven out again 30 minutes later after bidding him farewell in the guarded prison car park, away from the throng of media lenses gathered at the gate.
“This bourgeois theory that it’s a frightful blotting of the ledger is a lot of nonsense. It didn’t happen to Martha Stewart,” he added bullishly, referring to the home-making guru who went to jail in 2004 for lying to federal investigators over a share trading deal.
“Besides, I am innocent. If I’d actually done anything illegal, I wouldn’t contest it, I would repent it,” he stated,
Yeah right Blackie, you only ripped off your shareholders for millions to provide yourself and your harridan of a wife with a Billionaire lifestyle which you really could not afford, while causing hundreds of your own empoyees who had poured their money into your company pension schemes to face lives of destitution
Born in Montreal, Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to accept a British peerage, taking the title Lord Black of Crossharbour.
So he joins the illustrious ranks including the likes of Archer, auspicious company for sure.
Since his conviction at a trial in Chicago last July, when a jury found him guilty on three counts of wire fraud and one of obstructing justice, the Canadian government has refused him entry to his original homeland, in line with its policy on barring criminals.
“I will be back to Toronto before too long but I’m still slugging it out with the US fascists and I hope to dispense with this nonsense this year,” he blustered in an email to a friend two weeks ago.
He added today: “This is the last phase. When I come out of this place, this whole God damned nightmare is over. I’m not that old; I’m not poor and I’m still serviceable, so it’s not the end of the world.”
One wonders what he meant by being serviceable?
Conrad Black, the disgraced British peer and media tycoon, declared with typical defiance today that it was “not the end of the world” as he swapped his champagne lifestyle for a prison cell in Florida.
Still protesting his innocence after being convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, having looted his company of millions of dollars, the bombastic 63-year-old even invoked Sir Winston Churchill as he lashed out theatrically at his accusers.
“They will have their fleeting moment of brutish triumph,” he said in a final interview with the National Post of Canada, on the eve of his incarceration.
“A moron who actually seriously looks at this case sees that it is a crock and I expect it will ultimately be determined to be so. But to the extent that it isn’t so determined, it will seem to be an injustice - and victims of injustice are not normally despised people.”
Barring a successful appeal, which is not due to be heard until June, Black has been ordered to serve six and a half years in the prison’s low-security wing as inmate number 18330-424, and must serve at least 85 per cent of his sentence before he qualifies for parole.
Accompanied by his wife, the British journalist Barbara Amiel, Black was driven the 210-mile journey from his beachfront mansion in the millionaires’ playground of Palm Beach - where neighbours include Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger and Rod Stewart - to the bleak prison complex, located among ranchland and quarries beside a rural road punctuated by stalls selling boiled peanuts and fruit.
He had been ordered by a judge to report by 2pm latest. He arrived on the dot of noon, sweeping in to the compound in the back of a sports utility vehicle with darkened windows. Beside him was his wife, who was driven out again 30 minutes later after bidding him farewell in the guarded prison car park, away from the throng of media lenses gathered at the gate.
“This bourgeois theory that it’s a frightful blotting of the ledger is a lot of nonsense. It didn’t happen to Martha Stewart,” he added bullishly, referring to the home-making guru who went to jail in 2004 for lying to federal investigators over a share trading deal.
“Besides, I am innocent. If I’d actually done anything illegal, I wouldn’t contest it, I would repent it,” he stated,
Yeah right Blackie, you only ripped off your shareholders for millions to provide yourself and your harridan of a wife with a Billionaire lifestyle which you really could not afford, while causing hundreds of your own empoyees who had poured their money into your company pension schemes to face lives of destitution
Born in Montreal, Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to accept a British peerage, taking the title Lord Black of Crossharbour.
So he joins the illustrious ranks including the likes of Archer, auspicious company for sure.
Since his conviction at a trial in Chicago last July, when a jury found him guilty on three counts of wire fraud and one of obstructing justice, the Canadian government has refused him entry to his original homeland, in line with its policy on barring criminals.
“I will be back to Toronto before too long but I’m still slugging it out with the US fascists and I hope to dispense with this nonsense this year,” he blustered in an email to a friend two weeks ago.
He added today: “This is the last phase. When I come out of this place, this whole God damned nightmare is over. I’m not that old; I’m not poor and I’m still serviceable, so it’s not the end of the world.”
One wonders what he meant by being serviceable?