[LINK] "Black can't appeal empire-destroyer reputation"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's David Olive has an article in today's Star considering Conrad Black's surprisingly success in gaining the right to appeal his conviction on fraud charges to the US Supreme Court. Olive is skeptical as to whether Black's conviction was entirely above the board, given his lawyer's alienation of the jury and the scattershot application of charges. Still, he doesn't doubt that he'll have to continue to deal with his legacy as a fraudster and a destroyer of companies.

Which means Black won't shed his lifelong status as a convicted felon, or the perhaps sadder fate of being a once-powerful industrialist now challenged to find assets to cover the multimillion-dollar cost of realizing his new privilege of making his case before the top court.

Floyd Norris, the veteran New York Times business columnist, is convinced that the appeal-court decision Black seeks to have the court overturn "leaves little room for doubt that fraud was committed here."

Still, Norris allows that if Black's jail time is shortened, "it will be interesting to see if [Black] can reclaim his place in high society."

Black hasn't the necessary funds to reclaim a place except in the op-ed pages of the National Post and The Globe and Mail, which inexplicably freed up scarce newsprint for Black's explanations of why Barack Obama couldn't win the U.S. presidency.

No, Black's unalterable legacy is his rare distinction of being on the scene for the dismantling, possibly, of three industrial empires. Those would be the old Argus Corp. (Massey-Ferguson Ltd., Dominion Stores Ltd., CFRB); his own brief mini-Murdoch empire – and CanWest Global Communications Inc., the Asper media conglomerate facing implosion as it continues to choke on the acquisition debt from buying Black's big-city Canadian dailies at the top of the market nine years ago.

Fairly or not, Black's reputation as a destroyer of businesses is set in stone, regardless of the outcome of a foreign court's ruling on the validity of fraud charges on which he was convicted.