Jurors at Conrad Black's fraud trial heard a tape today of angry shareholders questioning millions of dollars in payments Black and other executives had received, and they were read a memo in which the former media baron excoriated his company's investors as idiots.
The show-and-tell testimony in the trial's 10th week came during the questioning of government witness Paul Healy, former head of investor relations at Hollinger International, the US firm through which Black controlled what was once one of the world's largest newspaper publishing companies.
Mr Healy testified that Peter Atkinson, one of Mr Black's three co-defendants and former general counsel of Hollinger International, told him that non-competition payments from one major deal had been "inaccurately" described to Hollinger shareholders.
The payments he referred to came in 2000 when most of the Canadian newspapers owned by Hollinger were sold to CanWest Global Communications Corp for C$3.2 billion.
Prosecutors claim Mr Black and the others cheated Hollinger and its shareholders out of $60 million by using the non-compete payments from that deal and other media property sales as improper tax-free bonuses. Such a payment is put forward by a buyer to gain a guarantee that the seller does not re-enter the same market as new competition.
Mr Healy said he forwarded an e-mail to Mr Black one week before a May 2002 shareholders meeting at the Metropolitan Club in New York from investment house Tweedy, Browne Co. LLC.
The e-mail complained about management fees paid to a company closely controlled by Mr Black and about the non-compete payments going to executives in past years.
Tweedy Browne wanted to know why Hollinger management was being rewarded when, it said, the previous year's loss on the sale of Canadian assets was C$280 million.