Being able to travel to the USA: Priceless

For non USA citizens, visiting the USA has gotten more difficult since 9/11. And for some non-citizens, it can be impossible. But in the coverage of these unfortunate cases, there is a particular class of barred individuals whose plight has been shamefully ignored by the liberal media -- that of the rich tycoon who can't enter the USA because he'd be arrested or served with messy writs the moment he set foot in the place. And we're not talking about the exiled US citizens such as Marc Rich, forced to summer (and winter) in Zug, Switzerland, until his pardon by Bill Clinton.

Rather, we have in mind someone like Nicky Oppenheimer, chairman of De Beers. Nicky can jet between Cape Town, London, and all points in between no problem, but his huge wealth is not enough to get him or any of the Oppenheimers or De Beers executives into the USA, because the government has two diamond price fixing cases pending against the family company. Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday (subs. req'd) that De Beers is looking to settle the cases, not least because the taint attached to diamonds from the legal concerns and their often dubious sourcing is hurting their ability to compete with other luxury goods. So one of these days, Nicky might get to visit his company's biggest market.

We bring this up because even as Nicky gets off the barred list, he could be replaced by none other than Conrad "Lord" Black. We haven't posted about Black in a while, but he suffered a major legal reversal this week when a Delaware court blocked one of his typically brazen stunts. Black was looking to do a back-door sale of his media empire at a knock-down price to a mysterious Channel Islands company, but the judge ruled that Black was trying to screw the other shareholders in his empire by doing so, and furthermore that he had almost certainly lied to the court in his explanation of how the deal was put together.

Thus poor Conrad has handed a gift to the blizzard of lawsuits against him and may even have perjured himself. Sounds like a good reason to hang out in London for a long time, safe from the reach of the American courts. While in London, he can host his pal Richard Perle, key promoter of the Iraq war, who should be flying in any day to sue the New Yorker for libel [this Slate story explains]. He can always send a shopping list for his favourite American goodies with Lady Black, who will doubtless want to take advantage of the cheap dollar to add to her shoe collection.