Hollinger International has announced that an internal investigation has found former executives, including ex-chief executive, Lord Black, guilty of taking $400 million of the group’s money.
According to BBC News online, the investigation papers said that the sum, which accounted for 95.2% of its adjusted net income between 1997 to 2003, was used to ‘line their pockets in almost every way they could devise’.
However Lord Black’s office has hit back and said the allegations were ‘exaggerated claims laced with outright lies.’
The investigations got underway when Black was accused by the Hollinger Board of Directors of siphoning millions of dollars in unauthorised payments from the company. Then in November 2003, shortly after the initial allegations, Black resigned as chairman and chief executive (see Black Leaves Troubled Hollinger As Predators Circle).
Things went from bad to worse for the troubled media tycoon, when he tried to flog his stake in the Telegraph titles to millionaire twins, the Barclay Brothers, to raise cash for his ever mounting lawyers bill.
However, a court ruling in Delaware stopped the deal going through, after Hollinger’s directors were outraged at the move because Black had broken an earlier promise to let them sell off the group bit by bit to the highest bidders.
The sale to the Barclay’s, who also own the Scotsman, eventually went through last month for £665 million (see Barclays Get Go-Ahead For Telegraph Take-Over).
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