Richard Perle, corporate criminal

Even the new board of Hollinger International's new board admits that Conrad Black's Hollinger was a "corporate kleptocracy." See Hollinger executives 'took $400m' [BBC], for a quick and damning synopsis of the Hollinger scandal.

Lord Black assembled a dissolute dream team, including "Black Prince" Richard Perle. Flyod Norris recounts the reports findings against Richard Perle, Henry Kissenger, and other top Hollinger directors in New York Times, Hollinger's Board: Most Irresponsible Ever?:

The report lets most of the directors off with little more than a mild rebuke for not having shown much curiosity in how the business was run. The members of the audit committee during the years when Lord Black was taking out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash draw harsher criticism for their passiveness, but the director who is excoriated in the strongest terms is Mr. Perle.

His many and varied roles at Hollinger seem to have aroused questions even from Lord Black- a man who knew conflicts of interest if anyone did. In one case, Lord Black is said to have sent a letter to Mr. Perle, questioning the conflicts. There is no record of whether Mr. Perle answered the letter, the report says, and nothing seems to have been done about the issue.

Mr. Perle was chairman of Hollinger's Internet investing subsidiary, which lost lots of money. But he and other insiders had an unusual deal that gave them a share of profits from good investments without requiring those amounts to be offset by losses from bad investments.

Mr. Perle collected $3.1 million through that deal - payments that the committee said were not fully disclosed to shareholders, as they should have been. By the committee's account, Mr. Perle was responsible for $63.6 million in Hollinger investments, on which the company lost a net $49 million.

After the Internet boom collapsed, Mr. Perle persuaded Hollinger to invest in Trireme Partners, a venture capital firm that he helped found. He even signed, on Hollinger's behalf, the commitment letter for the investment.

The committee said that such an investment should have been approved by the audit committee or by independent directors, but no such approval was sought. It was Mr. Perle's dual status as an employee of Trireme and a Hollinger director that led to Lord Black's questions.

[Addendum: More Black pearls on Perle from Chris of Explanada, who recommends Canadian blogger Pogge.ca for ongoing coverage of the Conrad Black.]