Donald Trump grants ex-media mogul Conrad Black full pardon

Former media mogul Conrad Black has been pardoned by US President Trump
REUTERS

Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to former media mogul Conrad Black, who was imprisoned for three years for defrauding investors.

Lord Black of Crossharbour, 74, is the former proprietor of the Daily Telegraph and a number of other world newspapers. He was released from prison in the United States in 2012.

Black last year published a book praising the US leader titled "Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other".

The White House said Black is “entirely deserving” of the pardon and said he had made "tremendous contributions to business” at it made the announcement.

Conrad Black arrives at the federal building in Chicago in 2011. Donald Trump has now granted him a full pardon.
AP

Black was found guilty in the US in 2007 of scheming to siphon off millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by Hollinger Inc, where he was chief executive and chairman.

Two of his three fraud convictions were later voided, and his sentence was shortened. He was released from a Florida prison in May 2012 and deported from the US.

In 2013, the US Securities and Exchange Commission banned Black from acting as a director of a U.S. company and ordered him to pay $4.1 million in restitution.

Canada's Ontario Securities Commission ruled in 2015 that Black could no longer hold executive positions at listed companies or investment funds.

Black said Mr Trump "could not have been more gracious" as he rang to offer the pardon.

Writing in Canadian newspaper the National Post, he said: "My long ordeal with the US justice system was never anything but a confluence of unlucky events, the belligerence of several corporate governance charlatans, and grandstanding local and American judges, all fanned by an unusually frenzied international media showing exceptional interest in the case because I was a media owner."

"He [Mr Trump] could not have been more gracious and quickly got to his point: he was granting me a full pardon that would 'Expunge the bad wrap you got'."

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