Chicago – Prosecutors at media mogul Conrad Black’s fraud trial tried to use his own words against him Wednesday, reading portions of a letter in which he justified billing his companies for a personal chef and chauffeur and scoffed at taking “vows of poverty” for shareholders.
“We have a certain style that all these shareholders were well aware of when they came in,” Black wrote in the September 2002 letter to executives of his Hollinger media empire.
A lawyer for Black moved for a mistrial, arguing that the letter was prejudicial, but U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve denied his motion.
Black said he ran all of his companies in a tradition “where the controlling shareholders take reasonable steps to ensure their comfortable enjoyment of the position they (we, in fact), created for themselves.” He said concerns about heavy spending should not “force us into a hair shirt.”
“It is perfectly justifiable, given the extent to which my London house is used for legitimate corporate entertainment … for half of the cost of my chef and about 28 percent of the compensation received by two people who receive visitors and serve meals in that house, to be borne corporately,” he said.
