HLR Hollinger Intl CL A

- Company Will Oppose Filing That It Believes Has No Merit - CHICAGO, July 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hollinger International Inc. (NYSE:HLR) (the "Company") announced that Hollinger Inc. ("Inc."), a defendant in the Company's suit against certain of its former officers and directors and its controlling shareholders in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (the "Court"), has filed a motion seeking permission to file a counterclaim against the Company. The proposed counterclaim alleges, among other things, fraud in connection with Inc.'s 1995 sale to the Company of Inc.'s interest in The Telegraph and 1997 sale to the Company of certain of Inc.'s Canadian assets. The Company said that it will ask the Court to deny Inc.'s motion and reject its proposed counterclaim. Gordon A. Paris, Chief Executive Officer of the Company and Chairman of the Special Committee of the Board of Directors, said: "Today, two-and-a-half years after the Company sued Inc. and approximately fifteen months after Inc. filed its answer to the Company's claims -- and after the parties exchanged approximately two million pages of documents in 2004 and 2005 -- Inc. seeks to inject new claims regarding nine-to-eleven year-old transactions. With this maneuver, Inc. is grasping at straws to distract attention from the powerful evidence -- including its own recent admission in its cooperation agreement with U.S. law enforcement authorities -- of Inc.'s participation in the looting of the Company. Inc.'s claim that it allowed itself to be 'defrauded' in transactions with an entity that it majority-owned, dominated and controlled is both factually implausible and legally without merit. From a corporate governance standpoint, Inc.'s latest litigation gambit demonstrates the obvious conflict of interest afflicting the two Inc. directors on the Company's Board. The Company is studying its options to protect the interests of the public majority non-controlling stockholders." About Hollinger International Hollinger International Inc. is a newspaper publisher whose assets include The Chicago Sun-Times and a large number of community newspapers in the Chicago area. Certain statements made in this release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"). Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future results, performance or achievements, and may contain the words "believe," "anticipate," "expect," "estimate," "project, "will be," "will continue," "will likely result," "is subject to," or similar words or phrases. Forward- looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in reports filed by Hollinger International with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in its Forms 10-K and 10-Q and include a potential delisting by the NYSE of the Company's Class A Common Stock. New risk factors emerge from time to time and it is not possible for management to predict all such risk factors, nor can it assess the impact of all such risk factors on the Company's business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Contacts: Molly Morse / Jeremy Fielding Kekst and Company 212-521-4826/4825 / DATASOURCE: Hollinger International Inc. CONTACT: Molly Morse, +1-212-521-4826, , or Jeremy Fielding, +1-212-521-4825, , both of Kekst and Company, for Hollinger International Inc.

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