Barbara Amiel and Conrad Black at a fancy dress party in 2000
He populated his board of directors with bold-face names including Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle and Marie-Josée Kravis, and gave black-tie dinners that included Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as guest speakers.
Still faces more than $1 billion in civil litigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission and others, and is now on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in legal fees.
By RICHARD SIKLOS
Conrad M. Black, the Canadian-born press baron who cut a glittering swath through financial, political and high-society circles in Toronto, London and New York, was found guilty of fraud yesterday in a Chicago courtroom, along with three of his former employees.
Mr. Black, the former head of Hollinger International, faces as many as 35 years in prison, although the exact sentence determined by Judge Amy St. Eve at a sentencing hearing Nov. 30 is likely to be far shorter.
The verdict represents a remarkable turn in fortune for Mr. Black, the son of a wealthy Canadian businessman and society fixture who once commanded a far-flung media empire that included The Daily Telegraph in London, The Jerusalem Post and The Chicago Sun-Times, as well as scores of other papers in the United States, Canada and Australia.
“We’re gratified by the jury’s verdict,” Patrick Fitzgerald, United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told a news conference.
“We believe the verdict vindicates the serious public interest in making sure that when insiders in a corporation deal with money entrusted to the shareholders, that they’re not engaged in self-dealing, that they not break the law to benefit themselves instead of the shareholders,” he added. Mr. Black, also known as Lord Black of Crossharbour, was found guilty of three counts of mail fraud and a single count of obstruction of justice by the Chicago jury.
He was cleared of nine other counts, largely centered around so-called noncompete agreements in which Mr. Black and others were accused of skimming money from the sale of Hollinger assets under the pretense of being paid not to compete with the new owners.
When the judge read through each of the counts in the verdict, Mr. Black sat stonily but then shot the jury a scathing look. Later, he was consoled by his wife and his daughter, Alana, who had sat in the court to support him throughout the trial.
Mr. Black’s Canadian lawyer, Edward Greenspan, said he intended to appeal, noting that his client was cleared on most of the more serious charges.
“Obviously we’re disappointed — we came here to be acquitted of everything — but we’re not disheartened,” he said. “For the purposes of an appeal, this puts us in a pretty darn good position.”
Mr. Black surrendered his passport yesterday after a bail hearing and was ordered to remain in Chicago until the judge rules on whether to allow him to return to Canada, remain in Chicago or be remanded to custody.
At the bail hearing, the lead prosecutor, Eric Sussman, said he would argue for revoking Mr. Black’s bond, saying he is a flight risk.
During his long, flamboyant career, Mr. Black has alternately charmed and bullied journalists and, along with his wife, the columnist Barbara Amiel, has made social and business connections with powerful, largely politically conservative figures on both sides of the Atlantic.
He populated his board of directors with bold-face names including Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle and Marie-Josée Kravis, and gave black-tie dinners that included Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as guest speakers.
Mr. Black’s trial drew a large contingent of journalists from his native Canada and Britain, and became something of a curiosity in Chicago, a city he had rarely spent time in before his criminal trial but where Hollinger International was based. The company is now called the Sun-Times Media Group.
Charges of various counts of mail and tax fraud were also filed against Hollinger’s former chief financial officer, John A. Boultbee; a former vice president, Peter Y. Atkinson; and a former Hollinger lawyer, Mark S. Kipnis. The three were all found guilty on the same three counts of mail fraud that Mr. Black was — none of them stemming from the more attention-grabbing charges of fraud or the accusations that Mr. Black improperly charged lavish perks to the company.
In the end, Mr. Black and his three colleagues were found guilty of taking illegal payments from the company in two schemes adding up to $6.1 million — a relative trifle in the world of billionaires once inhabited by Mr. Black where, at its peak, his own net worth was estimated at more than $400 million.
Mr. Black and the others, along with F. David Radler, a former business partner, were charged in 2005 with looting Hollinger International of more than $80 million. When the trial began on March 27, the amount was reduced to $60 million, which, Mr. Fitzgerald maintained, was the property of the company.
One of the two schemes that led to convictions involved a subsidiary of Hollinger International paying the defendants for agreeing that they would not compete with that subsidiary, American Publishing Company, for three years if they were to leave the company. At that time, however, American Publishing’s sole asset was a small paper in Mammoth County, Calif., that it was in the process of selling.
Aftermath News 
