The hypocrisy of American justice boggles the mind.

In March 2004, television personality Martha Stewart was convicted on four counts of obstruction of justice. She served five months in prison and six months under house arrest.

In May 2006, former Enron executives Kenneth L Lay and Jeffrey K Skilling were convicted on 10 counts of fraud and obstruction of justice in a case where billions of dollars in corporate debts were kept off the Enron books leading to collapse of the company and the loss of billions for shareholders. Kenneth Lay died before he was sentenced but Skilling is serving a 24 year sentence.

In June 2003, White House officials revealed the name of Valerie Plame Wilson to the media as an undercover "operative" who worked in a CIA division on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That revelation came after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson had challenged the U.S. President in a New York Times editorial on his claim that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium from Niger. The 1982 U.S. “Intelligence Identities Protection Act” makes it a crime to knowingly disclose the name of a covert agent.

I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney was convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the case. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and fined $250,000. President Bush commuted his sentence meaning he will not have to go to jail. The others were never charged.

When her name became public, Wilson lost her job. She and her husband sued Libby, White House political adviser Karl Rove, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage and Vice President Chaney for damages. This week, a U.S. federal judge dismissed the case on “jurisdictional grounds”.

In March 2003, the President of the United States authorized an illegal invasion of Iraq after lying about the reasons for invasion. Those lies are responsible for 3,660 U.S. troop deaths and another 35,638 wounded the death or injury of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis and the expenditure of nearly a trillion dollars in U.S. taxpayers' money. He has yet to be charged or sentenced.

This week, a black man in Georgia was scheduled to be executed for killing a police officer in 1989, even though most of the key witnesses at his trial have recanted their testimony and in some cases admitted they had lied under pressure from police. On Tuesday, a Georgia Clemency Board ordered a 90-day stay of execution for Troy Davis.

All of this is backdrop to the conviction of Conrad Black on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. In the United States, mail fraud refers to any scheme which attempts to obtain money or valuables in an unlawful way and uses the U.S. postal system in that attempt. It’s a criminal offence.

Obstruction of justice refers to the crime of offering interference to the work of police investigators, regulatory agencies or prosecutors. Obstruction charges are laid when it is discovered that a person questioned in an investigation has lied to the investigating officers or when a person alters or destroys physical evidence, even if they were under no compulsion to produce such evidence.

The issue of fraud centers on the payment of non-competition monies (non-competes) to Black and senior executives of Hollinger Inc, a publicly traded company in which he was the majority shareholder. The payment of non-competes is a fairly common business practice that protects buyers of a business from competition that might subsequently be created by the sellers of the business after completion of a sale.

Prosecutors alleged that Black and the other defendants paid themselves performance bonuses but described the bonuses as non-compete payments so they would be tax free in Canada. Black was found not guilty of tax fraud. He was also cleared of racketeering.

It was also alleged that non-compete payments were paid to Black upon sale of various newspaper properties by Hollinger. He was cleared of fraud charges relating to the sale of CNHI (a group of community newspapers in the U.S.) and CanWest (the National Post in Canada) but convicted on the basis of three other property sales.

In the case of a publicly traded company, non-compete payments would have to be approved by the Board of Directors acting on behalf of shareholders. In trial, the directors could not recall having provided such approvals in which case payments should have gone to the shareholders, not the executives of Hollinger.

The obstruction of justice charge resulted from the fact that Black was captured on security video-cameras in May 2005 removing 13 boxes of documents from his office in Toronto. The government alleged that Black knew that he was under investigation by a grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission and removed documents that prosecutors and investigators had demanded be turned over to them.

A charge relating to alleged money laundering was dropped during the trial. The jury also found that his use of company money to hold a surprise birthday party for his wife, his use of a corporate jet for a private holiday and his purchase of a New York apartment from Hollinger at below market rates were not improper. Not guilty!

For improperly using the U.S. postal service and hauling away some documents, Black may go to jail for up to thirty years. He may lose all or most of his personal wealth and he may be booted from the Order in Canada.

I’m not defending the man nor am I suggesting that he should go unpunished if guilty but thirty years in prison for mail fraud and obstruction seem like severe punishment when compared to the crimes of those who remain free.

Martha Stewart where are you when I need you.


W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at mailto:bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com