Radler cut 'best deal of his life'

CLOSING ARGUMENTS | Lawyer: Ex-publisher lied to get leniency

A defense attorney Thursday suggested that former Chicago Sun-Times publisher David Radler invented a fraud scheme against the media company as a way to avoid jail time for his own crime.

Michael Schachter, an attorney for former Hollinger International executive Peter Atkinson, said Radler knew that controversial payments to former CEO Conrad Black and other officers had been approved by Hollinger board members.

But Radler testified to the contrary in order to win a light jail sentence, Schachter said.

"David Radler believed the audit committee approved each of these payments," Schachter said during closing arguments Thursday in the federal fraud trial against Black, Atkinson and two other former Hollinger International executives.

The former executives are charged with helping to steal about $84 million from Hollinger International, now called Sun-Times Media Group. Radler pleaded guilty to fraud.

The charges focus on non-compete payments that went to the executives and to companies Black controlled, instead of to Hollinger International shareholders.

Schachter claimed that Radler arranged to have a $2 million non-compete payment from the sale of the Hollinger publication called American Trucker to be transferred from International to its parent company, Hollinger Inc. A memo showed Radler knew of the transfer. Black, Radler's partner, controlled Hollinger Inc.

Schachter said that because of a memo, Radler knew he could face five years in prison. So he changed his story and said the audit committee had not approved millions of dollars in non-competes from U.S. sales.

"Knowing he had no answer to that memo, he cut the best deal of his life," Schachter said, referring to the possibility that Radler could spend just six months at a "horse farm" prison in Canada.