Conrad Black, the former Hollinger International Inc. chairman convicted this month of fraud and obstruction of justice, hired one of Wall Street banker Frank Quattrone’s lawyers to represent him on appeal.
Andrew Frey, 68, a partner in the New York office of Chicago-based Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw, will lead the efforts to overturn Black’s conviction, the executive’s lead trial lawyer said.
“He’s one of the best appeals lawyers in the country,” Black’s attorney Edward Genson of Chicago said of Frey.
Quattrone, 51, a former Credit Suisse Group investment banker, was tried twice and convicted once on obstruction of justice. Frey teamed on the appeal with attorney Mark Pomerantz, a partner in the New York law firm Paul Weiss. They successfully overturned the conviction.
Genson, who handled Black’s criminal case with Toronto lawyer Edward Greenspan, said his own role in the case now will be to guide Frey through the trial record.
A federal jury on July 13 found Black and three other ex- Hollinger executives guilty of three counts of mail fraud stemming from their use of noncompete agreements to pay themselves millions of dollars that prosecutors said belonged to Hollinger, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers.
Black, 62, Hollinger’s former chief executive officer, was also found guilty of illegally taking documents subject to subpoena from his Toronto office. Prosecutors have said they seek a 15 TO 20 year prison term for him. Black and the others defendants are to be sentenced on Nov. 30.
Black is free on $21 million bail and has not formally appealed yet. He surrendered his passport and is confined to the federal Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, and the Southern District of Florida, where he has a home in Palm Beach.
