Fallen press baron Conrad Black goes on trial this week in Chicago, insisting that charges of pilfering $84 million in proceeds from his crumbling media empire represent the persecution of the powerful. Jury selection begins on Wednesday in US District Judge Amy St. Eve's courtroom in what promises to be a lengthy and complex federal trial packed with financial details that could test even Black's famously prodigious memory.
"A lot of people see Conrad Black as a martyr and a victim of an overzealous legal system," said lawyer Andrew Stoltmann, an expert on investment fraud who plans to watch portions of the anticipated four-month trial.
If convicted on fraud, racketeering and other charges, the 62-year-old Black, a member of Britain's House of Lords, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Three other defendants on trial in the case are Black's former deputies, corporate attorneys Mark Kipnis and Peter Atkinson and accountant John Boultbee. All are accused of looting Chicago-based media company Hollinger International Inc.
Black has called the charges "a smear job" and cast himself as a "freedom fighter" intent on exposing his accusers.
Some critics view Black as pompous and hypocritical, one of a growing list of corporate titans who have enriched themselves at the expense of shareholders and workers, but who believe they only took what was rightfully theirs.
Black, the scion of a wealthy Montreal brewer, bought up hundreds of Canadian and US newspapers and magazines, creating one of the world's largest newspaper publishers that had $2 billion in revenue at its peak in 1999.
He renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to become Lord Black of Crossharbour, an honour conferred on owners of the Daily Telegraph in London - once his empire's jewel.
Black also owned the Jerusalem Post and started the National Post in Canada, all of which have since been sold off. The Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of smaller newspapers are all that remain at Hollinger International, which has since been renamed Sun-Times Media Group Inc.
Educated in history and law and the author of an autobiography, two well-received biographies and a tome about Richard Nixon due out soon, Black became a jet setter. He held forth with his extensive vocabulary at soirees at a London townhouse, a New York co-op apartment, and a Palm Beach, Florida, mansion.
His wife, conservative columnist Barbara Amiel Black, famously told Vogue, "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds."
Upon buying newspapers, Black and his former partner David Radler would cut costs and put Black's neoconservative stamp on the publications' editorials. Radler has pleaded guilty and will likely be the prosecution's star witness.
With Hollinger in debt, Black and Radler began in 2000 to sell off pieces of the media conglomerate.
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