Letters | 13 June 2009

Back to Black

Sir: Taki (High Life, 16 May) exaggerated the ineptitude of my counsel in Chicago, and in this I am happy to agree with Tom Bower (Letters, 23 May), but they were not my counsel of choice, whom I was prevented from retaining by an asset seizure that was subsequently judged by the jury to be improper. Nor is this a tough prison. It is low security, not divided into cells, and without violence, but Taki is correct that the judge and probation officer recommended minimal security, for which I am technically not eligible as a non-American.

Bower is completely mistaken in everything else he wrote in his letter. There has never been any amount remotely approaching $50 million of mortgages on my Toronto and Palm Beach houses and certainly is not now. None of the defendants in our case testified, because voluntary appearances by accused people in the US opens up a very wide range of new subjects for prosecutors to explore with interrogatory techniques that would not be acceptable in Britain; and we all thought we had won the case.