Evidence used to convict Black 'flimsy', claims lawyer
Jailed former newspaper tycoon Conrad Black was convicted of fraud on the flimsiest of evidence, his lawyers told an appeal court.
"This is the weakest case I've seen in 45 years of law practise," lawyer Andrew Frey said.
However, the three-judge panel from the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals asked him how he would describe the arrangement in which 63-year-old Black and two other defendants received 5.5m (€3.5m).
"You're saying it's management fees recharacterised as non-competition fees for Canadian tax purposes," one said. "It can't be both."
Black is serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for swindling shareholders of the former Hollinger International media empire.
In July a federal jury found him guilty of three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. He was acquitted of nine other counts.
Black was accused of taking millions of dollars belonging to Hollinger shareholders through what were billed as non-compete payments from buyers of community newspapers owned by the company, now called Sun-Times Media Group.
Hollinger was once one of the world's largest newspaper holding companies with hundreds of community newspapers across the United States and Canada as well as The Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Jurors convicted Black of obstruction of justice after seeing a videotape of the newspaper mogul hauling boxes of documents out of the Toronto office and loading them into his car. Prosecutors said he was trying to hide evidence of financial wrongdoing from Securities and Exchange Commission investigators.
However, Mr Frey said the prosecution did not show Black intended to destroy or conceal any documents.
The defence also argued that US District Judge Amy J. St Eve did not give fair instructions to the jury.
Lead prosecutor Eric Sussman said Thursday he was confident the panel would agree with the trial judge and the jury and uphold the convictions.
The judges could make a decision in four to six weeks, Mr Frey said.
