Conrad Black aide made mistakes, defender says

A lawyer accused of helping Conrad Black skim millions of dollars from one of the world’s largest media companies made honest mistakes but was not guilty of fraud, his attorney told a jury Wednesday.

Mark Kipnis, 60, a former general counsel for Black’s Hollinger International Inc., was an outsider unfamiliar with the newspaper business and public companies who “did the best he could with the information he had, given his experience,” attorney Ron Safer said.

“He’s not perfect, perhaps he’s negligent,” Safer said. But accepting a bonus for one of the payments in question “was an honest mistake,” he added during the second day of the criminal fraud trial for Black, Kipnis and two other former Black associates.

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in opening statements in U.S. District Court labeled all four defendants greedy thieves who stole $60 million from the Chicago-based company -- now called the Sun-Times Media Group Inc. -- as it sold most of its newspapers and other properties from 1998 to 2001.

Black is charged with fraud, racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice. Convictions could result in a maximum prison sentence of 101 years, plus millions in fines and $92 million in forfeitures.

Prosecutor Jeffrey H. Cramer, in his opening statement Tuesday, said Kipnis was the point of contact with the company’s audit committee who did not receive the money in question directly but was paid a bonus for his actions.

Kipnis and the other defendants, accountant Jack Boultbee, 63, and Hollinger lawyer Peter Y. Atkinson, 59, are charged with lesser offenses than Black. Kipnis is accused of accepting a $100,000 bonus from one deal that Black and longtime partner David Radler signed agreeing not to compete in a market where they sold a property.

Black and Radler were ousted from Hollinger in 2003 and 2004 after an internal committee accused them of operating a “corporate kleptocracy” that stole millions.