Conrad Black asks Canadian regulator to throw out case against him

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Former media mogul Conrad Black has filed a motion with the Ontario Securities Commission to try to get his case thrown out before it goes to a hearing.

The OSC said Tuesday it will hold a hearing March 26 and 27 to consider Mr. Black's request to stay proceedings in his case, or alternately, to get more direction about the scope of the allegations the regulator intends to make against him.

Mr. Black has until Feb. 7 to file a motion record outlining his arguments for seeking a stay in his case. His lawyer, Peter Howard, has previously said the OSC case is "entirely unnecessary" because it deals with many of the same issues already covered by U.S. court rulings and by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In August last year, the SEC banned Mr. Black from acting as a director of a U.S. company and ordered him to pay $4.1-million in restitution in a settlement of a long-running case involving Mr. Black's actions as former chief executive officer of media company Hollinger Inc. The money was to be paid to Chicago Newspaper Liquidation Corp., which is a successor company to Hollinger in the United States.

Mr. Black previously served 37 months in a U.S. prison for fraud and obstruction of justice, and was released in 2012.

In July, 2013, the OSC announced it would revive its case against Mr. Black, which had been on hold since 2005 while the OSC awaited the resolution of Mr. Black's criminal case and subsequent appeals.

The OSC alleged Mr. Black and two other former Hollinger associates acted "contrary to the public interest" by participating in a scheme to divert company money to themselves through contrived "non-competition" payments from the sale of some of the company's newspapers.

Mr. Black denied the allegations last year and said he was "looking forward to disposing of these allegations once and for all."

The OSC has reached settlements with former Hollinger executives David Radler and Peter Atkinson.