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There are numbers you toss around, numbers you think you can prove, and numbers that won’t confuse a jury. Back in August 2004, an internal investigation by Hollinger International concluded that deposed execs Conrad Black, David Radler, et al had stolen about $400 million from the company. But when the federal indictment came down a year later, Black and et al (Radler turned state’s evidence) were accused of swiping only about $84 million, and that, or some approximation, became the number in play in the media right up to the start of the trial. Yet when assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Cramer began his opening statement Tuesday he told the jury, “You are sitting in a room with four men who stole $60 million.”
And they should have: the prosecution was just keeping it simple. The $60 million allegedly disappeared in business deals in which all four defendants — Black, Peter Atkinson, John Boultbee, and Mark Kipnis — were working together. The prosecution still maintains that Black, sometimes working freelance, took a lot more.
