MONTREAL, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Convicted media mogul Conrad Black has been stripped of the Order of Canada and removed from the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, officials said.
David Johnston, the governor general of Canada, made the announcement in a statement Friday, the National Post reported.
"Both decisions are effective immediately," the statement said.
The statement offered no explanation for the decision but the Order of Canada's advisory committee had been reviewing whether to revoke Black's award since 2011, over his 2007 conviction for fraud and obstruction of justice in the United States. Following his conviction, Black served 37 months of a 42-month sentence.
Committee policy states the award can be revoked if the recipient has been convicted of a criminal offense, done something out of step with the "generally recognized standards of public behavior," or been "sanctioned by a professional organization."
Black, 69, is only the sixth of more than 6,000 recipients to be stripped of the award.
Black, who founded the National Post, told the newspaper in a 2012 email he would fight to keep the award as a matter of principle.
"Whether I am actually an officer of [the Order of Canada] is not especially important, but the process is," Black said, "and no one should be threatened with deprivation of such an honor on the basis of anonymous officials in a secret proceeding slavishly following a rogue foreign judge, in a, to say the least, unrigorous finding."
