Court grants appeal in Conrad Black libel case

TORONTO — The Supreme Court of Canada said Thursday it will hear an appeal by ex-business associates of Conrad Black who argue Canadian courts are not the proper forum for the former media mogul to pursue libel suits against them.

Black sued committee members of media company Hollinger International, where he was once the chairman and CEO, over statements regarding his use of shareholder money.

The statements were published on the Sun-Times Media Inc. website and republished by many media outlets in Ontario.

Court documents cite, in particular, a 2004 report from the committee, authored by former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Richard Breeden, that said the company was a "corporate kleptocracy" when Black was chief executive.

The report said Black "freely used the company's coffers, financed by its public shareholders, to finance (his) own lifestyle," and that Black had "looted" the newspaper publisher of at least $300 million.

These statement led to an investigation of Black's operations and, in 2005, the former media baron was charged, along with three associates, of 11 counts of fraud, one of obstruction of justice, and one of racketeering for defrauding investors of Hollinger International.

In 2007, Black was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison after he was convicted of three counts of criminal fraud and obstruction of justice, but cleared of racketeering and wire fraud.

The defendants in Black's libel case claim his case against them should not proceed in Ontario because Black is no longer a Canadian and the statements were made in the United States by directors, officers and advisers of an American corporation in accordance with U.S. security laws.

Hollinger is based in New York and Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 so he could become a member of the U.K.'s House of Lords.

A lower court dismissed the defendants' motion for a stay in 2009, and they appealed the decision, but a court rejected that appeal in August.

The Ontario appeals court agreed with the lower court judge's finding that no single jurisdiction was home to the majority of the parties involved in the lawsuits. Nine of the 11 parties were in the United States, but were spread across six different jurisdictions.

However, Canada's highest court on Thursday granted the appeal of the Ontario Court ruling that allowed Black's case against them to proceed in the province. The court said it will hear the appeals case on March 22.

Black is currently free on bail after serving more than two years in a Florida prison.

He was released in July after the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the law used to convict him of fraud.

In October, two of Black's fraud convictions were overturned by a U.S. appeals court that upheld a third, plus the obstruction of justice conviction.

Black has since filed a motion to have a U.S. federal appeals court in Chicago review a recent decision by three appeal judges.