TORONTO — Conrad Black has been permanently banned from being a corporate director or officer of a public company in Ontario.
The decision was released Friday by the Ontario Securities Commission, which sought the ban for Black and his former Hollinger chief financial office John Boultbee following their U.S. criminal convictions.
Boultbee received the same ban under the OSC ruling.
The Ontario provincial regulator's decision follows years of litigation surrounding the former newspaper publisher's activities while head of the Hollinger group, which owned major newspapers in several countries while Black was at the helm.
Black has always insisted that he didn't break the law but he served 37 months of a 42-month sentence in a Florida prison after being convicted of one count of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice, and was fined US$125,000.
Boultbee was convicted of one count of fraud in the U.S.
Black testified at an OSC hearing in October that he had "no alternative'' but to fight regulatory prohibitions on his activities and seek to clear his name of allegations and convictions that he considered illegitimate.
But he also told the OSC panel that he had no plans to hold a corporate director or officer position again within Ontario's jurisdiction, which includes most publicly traded companies on Canada's largest stock exchange.
Black has previously been a director of several major companies, including CIBC, and was both an officer and director of several of the companies within the Hollinger newspaper group that he also controlled as a major shareholder.
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The decision was released Friday by the Ontario Securities Commission, which sought the ban for Black and his former Hollinger chief financial office John Boultbee following their U.S. criminal convictions.
Boultbee received the same ban under the OSC ruling.
The Ontario provincial regulator's decision follows years of litigation surrounding the former newspaper publisher's activities while head of the Hollinger group, which owned major newspapers in several countries while Black was at the helm.
Black has always insisted that he didn't break the law but he served 37 months of a 42-month sentence in a Florida prison after being convicted of one count of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice, and was fined US$125,000.
Boultbee was convicted of one count of fraud in the U.S.
Black testified at an OSC hearing in October that he had "no alternative'' but to fight regulatory prohibitions on his activities and seek to clear his name of allegations and convictions that he considered illegitimate.
But he also told the OSC panel that he had no plans to hold a corporate director or officer position again within Ontario's jurisdiction, which includes most publicly traded companies on Canada's largest stock exchange.
Black has previously been a director of several major companies, including CIBC, and was both an officer and director of several of the companies within the Hollinger newspaper group that he also controlled as a major shareholder.
Also on HuffPost: