Parallel Paths Diverging Sharply

On a hot evening this week in the Museum of Modern Art’s garden, Marie-Josée Kravis, the museum president, and her husband, Henry, played host to more than 900 guests who mingled near two giant Richard Serra sculptures. Her presence was cool and reserved, and her outfit of a shimmering sequin top and dark slacks struck a conservative tone amid the sun-fired skin and tummy-hugging gowns that the wives of other moguls favored.

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Marie-Josée Kravis at a party at the Museum of Modern Art. She is the president of the museum.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was there, as was Martin Scorsese — clad in tuxedos, as were most other men. The buyout executives Leon Black and Stephen A. Schwarzman huddled in a corner, and Bruce Wasserstein, the chairman of Lazard, chatted with Richard D. Parsons, the chief executive of Time Warner.

Part society gala, part networking session for the city’s business titans, it was the kind of event that Ms. Kravis, who is 57, has been working with verve and diligence since her days as a young economist in Canada, making her the toast of Ottawa, Montreal and now New York. With her smile sparkling, she was far removed from the pained testimony she gave this month as a prosecution witness in the trial of her friend Conrad Black, the former chief executive of Hollinger International, where she served as board member for eight years.

Part of the Canadian establishment in the 1980s, they emerged together in New York business and social circles in the 1990s. Today, Ms. Kravis remains a pillar of New York society, while Mr. Black, if convicted, faces a life prison term.

With its mix of high society and big business, the MoMA event might have appealed to Mr. Black.

“The essence of social life," he said in an interview in 1989, “is to make your contacts as interesting as they can be. Many people are intellectually stimulating. Some are not, but they happen to be important. So there is some utility in my knowing them.”

Marie-Josée Kravis, who would not comment for this article, was indeed a person worth knowing — a charter member of the Canadian establishment, whose conservative politics and glamorous countenance gave her entree to numerous Canadian boardrooms throughout the 1980s. In 1994, her marriage to Mr. Kravis, the buyout executive, gave her an additional luster, and several months later she accepted an offer from Mr. Black to join the Hollinger Inc. board.

Since his early days as a newspaperman in Montreal, Mr. Black has blended his business and social ambitions, packing his board with social and political dignitaries, and prosecutors say he charged to his company part of a birthday party and household expenses for a Park Avenue apartment and made liberal personal use of the company’s private plane. Prosecutors say Mr. Black and others took more than million from his company, and engaged in fraud by using Hollinger’s money to help finance such a grand lifestyle.

In today’s era of increased scrutiny, corporate spending on social and personal matters, a once blurred line, can now be questioned by directors, shareholders and in some cases, regulators and prosecutors.

Such indulgences can also be tiresome, as Mr. Black himself seemed to suggest when he sent an e-mail message to an associate in 2001 expressing some exasperation at having to buy a ,000 table at a Museum of Modern Art party in honor of Ms. Kravis.

“I suppose in accordance with our longstanding custom of supporting our directors that we’re stuck with this,” he wrote. “These New York charities are terribly rapacious.”

In fact, as evidenced by some long faces and slack jaws as the evening wore on at the MoMA party, getting ahead in society can be hard work.

“Go very light on the vices such as carrying on in society,” counseled Satchel Paige, the baseball pitcher and aphorist. “The social ramble ain’t restful.” Now facing 100 years in prison, Mr. Black might well agree.

Until recently, Ms. Kravis and Mr. Black pursued a similar path.

With their taste for conservative politics, hunger for social advancement and ease in corporate boardrooms, Ms. Kravis and Mr. Black left their Canadian origins in the past.

How sharply the symmetry of their respective ascents has diverged was displayed vividly this month in a Chicago courtroom.

On the stand was Ms. Kravis, who at various times has served on the audit committee of four major corporate boards in addition to Hollinger. Watching her intently was Mr. Black.

Subjected to a barrage of pointed questions by Mr. Black’s lawyer, she admitted to missing some board meetings, to not being a financial expert as defined by new Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for audit committee members, and most crucially, to not having read parts of documents that disclosed the noncompete payments made to Mr. Black. Other audit committee members who testified were Richard Burt and former Gov. James R. Thompson of Illinois.

Legal analysts say that by admitting that she was shown papers that described the payments, she may have undercut the prosecution’s case that he schemed to steal the money.

But for Mr. Black, the sharpest cut of all may have come with the low regard she seemed to show for the 60th-birthday party he gave for his second wife, Barbara, in 2000. Held at La Grenouille, a restaurant that caters to tastemakers on the Upper East Side, it was a lavish bid by Mr. Black to cement his place in Manhattan society, and those invited included Oscar de la Renta, Dixon Boardman and Barbara Walters.

Prosecutors contend that this was a social gathering, not a business one as Mr. Black contends. On the stand, Ms. Kravis agreed: “It was a birthday celebration,” not a business event, she said. And had she attended the party?

“Only the last 15 or 30 minutes,” she replied flatly. “I had another obligation that evening.”

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