Recently, former Canadian media mogul Conrad Black was released from a Florida prison after serving less than three years of a seven year sentence.
Expressing opinions on Black has long been a preoccupation for members of the Canadian media. In the past few years, Black has been labelled everything from a malicious robber baron to a tragic hero, plagued chiefly by his own hubris.
Conrad Black is neither of these things. He is an unwilling victim of both a crusading U.S. judicial system and the political milieu that made it possible.
It should come as no surprise that Lord Black has remained the whipping boy for many commentators in this country. This is a man who betrayed his country and abandoned his Canadian citizenship in order to play dress-up across the ocean, right?
Well, no. But those who have derided Black are not interested in discussing the painfully anachronistic Nickle Resolution, because it’s not really about Black the man, it’s about Black the idea.
From Enron to Bernie Madoff, from oil spills to risky lending practices, the public animosity toward private enterprise is understandable. However, this outrage has precipitated a backlash against business that has done far more harm than good.
The public now perceives the entrepreneurial spirit itself as malicious and exploitative, and the government and judiciary systems have nurtured this perception. Consequently, they unjustly targeted perhaps the most opulent and bombastic business figure of our time: Baron Black of Crossharbour.
His incarceration was part of a broader trend that has been labelled by some commentators as “the criminalization of business.” The “honest services” law used to convict Black was so poorly conceived that it was deemed “unconstitutionally vague” in a unanimous decision by the US Supreme Court. The criminalization of business is real, and it is dangerous.
In a story filled with humiliation and injustice, perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is the waste of resources. Black was initially accused of stealing $400 million, but was only convicted for $2.9 million of fraud. Now even that charge has been thrown out.
Compare these amounts to the $200 million price tag for the investigation that led to Black’s arrest, not to mention the millions spent on his trial and imprisonment. We are all victims of this disaster.
I am also sympathetic to Black the man, who will never recoup the time, wealth and status that were stolen from him. But the majority of Canadians still see him as the apotheosis of business in the new millennium, an arrogant cosmopolitan on the psychopathic pursuit of profit. A perennial victimizer, never a victim.
That brings me back to my original point. The conviction of Conrad Black was made possible by an environment not only hostile to business, but also to those who make it their craft. We will only be able to move past this fiasco when we realize that society is not a zero-sum game, and Lord Black’s success is not our failure.
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