Today I was reading some BBC news reports about fomer Canadian media mogul Conrad Black's Hollinger group. "Hollinger"... sounds like a name for a fine French wine doesn't it?
Seems the former executives of Hollinger more or less stole $400 million of the company's money, which amounted to 95.2% of its adjusted net income, between 1997 and 2003. The company's new overseers say Lord Black and other executives "made it their business to line their pockets in almost every way they could devise".
OK, so what's that got to do with Bush & Co, I asked myself. Same modus operandi, same social millieu, spidey-sense is going crazy, but where's the paydirt? I could almost sniff it, I tell you...
Back home, six hours later, and there it is, courtesy of the wonderfully well-informed folk at antiwar.com. The New York Times says the new company report "saved its harshest criticism for Richard Perle":
"Mr. Perle was criticized for his involvement in Hollinger's Internet subsidiary, in which he, Lord Black and others were granted 22 percent of profits on successful investments — a total of $8.3 million — even though the subsidiary lost money over all. His share came to more than $3 million."
But you know what, here's the kicker (every good story needs a kicker)...
When I was living in the UK and regularly reading the right-wing "The Spectator" magazine (mostly for Jeffrey Bernard's Low Life column, believe me) I saw how foreigners like Conrad Black and Mohammed al-Fayed were hopelessly ostracized by the English aristocracy. It's only in the last 18 months that I've come to realise how such an aristocracy (including the increasinly influential Bush family) strangely exists on the other side of the Atlantic too, despite all the hoo-ha about "democracy" and whatever.
I just don't think that nice Mr Conrad Black - and hence his friend, the very nice Mr Richard Perle - would have been so helplessly exposed if they hadn't been just a little bit too... how shall I put this?... "foreign".
No comments:
Post a Comment