Black asks court to quash fraud conviction

Media baron Conrad Black is asking the US Supreme Court to overturn his convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice.

An appeal court in Chicago has already upheld the convictions, for which former Daily Telegraph owner Black is serving a six and a half-year prison term.

Black, the former chairman and chief executive of the Hollinger International media company, and two other former executives are urging the justices to hear their case because federal appeals courts around the US are divided on the central issue undergirding their convictions.

Black, 64, and former executives John Boultbee and Mark Kipnis argue in their appeal filed today that they cannot be convicted of fraud because they did no harm to Hollinger International.

The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling rejecting their claim “sharply conflicts with the decisions of at least five courts of appeals”, Miguel Estrada, their Washington DC lawyer, said in court papers.

Black also has asked US president George Bush for a pardon.

The peer was convicted in 2007 of siphoning off millions of dollars belonging to Hollinger when he was chief executive officer of the company that once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and hundreds of community papers across the US and Canada.

All of Hollinger’s big papers except the Sun-Times have now been sold and the company that emerged changed its name to Sun-Times Media Group.