CONRAD BLACK A POOR NEWSPAPER PROPRIETOR IN AUSTRALIA, SAYS FORMER FAIRFAX EDITOR
December 11th 2007 10:06
High profile Australian finance writer Alan Kohler and part-owner of the new Business Spectator website wrote an article for Crikey.com contrasting the judicial treatment of two rich law-breakers who happened, for a while, to be neighbours on Central Park in New York – Conrad Black and Australia’s tycoon Richard Pratt.
Kohler wrote, “Black was sentenced to 6˝ years in prison for having improperly taken $6.1 million in fees out of his company, Hollinger Inc, and for obstructing justice. Pratt was fined $36 million, and did not go to jail, after admitting that he conspired to defraud his customers of something like $400 million through an illegal cartel with his competitor Amcor.
“In October 2005, before Black was charged, police seized the US$8.5 million in proceeds from the sale of his Park Avenue, New York, home.
“Pratt still maintains an apartment at the top of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on 5th Avenue, just around the corner, for when he visits his Staten Island recycling factory.
“Such are the vagaries of justice, I suppose.”
Conrad Back spent time in Australia as a newspaper proprietor, but Alan Kohler was far from impressed by his performance.
Kohler wrote, “He was a poor proprietor of John Fairfax during my time as editor of The Age in the early 1990s, and my one meeting with him involved an interminable lecture on the Napoleonic wars. If he had any insights to offer about the management of newspapers, they were not forthcoming.”
From MediaBlab by Peter Olszewski for Factiva
Kohler wrote, “Black was sentenced to 6˝ years in prison for having improperly taken $6.1 million in fees out of his company, Hollinger Inc, and for obstructing justice. Pratt was fined $36 million, and did not go to jail, after admitting that he conspired to defraud his customers of something like $400 million through an illegal cartel with his competitor Amcor.
“Pratt still maintains an apartment at the top of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on 5th Avenue, just around the corner, for when he visits his Staten Island recycling factory.
“Such are the vagaries of justice, I suppose.”
Conrad Back spent time in Australia as a newspaper proprietor, but Alan Kohler was far from impressed by his performance.
Kohler wrote, “He was a poor proprietor of John Fairfax during my time as editor of The Age in the early 1990s, and my one meeting with him involved an interminable lecture on the Napoleonic wars. If he had any insights to offer about the management of newspapers, they were not forthcoming.”
From MediaBlab by Peter Olszewski for Factiva
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