LORD JOINS RANK
Conrad Black boasted until the bitter end that the criminal charges against him wouldn’t stick, but now, convicted of fraud and obstruction, the deposed media titan joins the ranks of great white-collar crooks busted for hubris and greed.
Like Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling, WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski before him, Black – barring a successful appeal – is slated to spend the next several years in the slammer for cheating investors out of millions.
The guilty verdict delivered against him on Friday in a downtown Chicago courtroom closes the book for now on the government’s five-year crackdown on corporate skullduggery that began after the collapse of Enron.
A blue-collar jury of nine women and three men convicted Black of three counts of mail fraud and a single count of obstruction of justice. They acquitted him of nine other counts, including the most serious charge of racketeering, which alone carried a maximum 20-year sentence, and other counts for tax fraud and mail fraud.
Black, 62, took every opportunity to deride the government’s case against him, sneering to reporters in French as he left the court when the jury first began deliberating that the allegations of fraud and racketeering were “pure fiction.”
Earlier, the Canadian-born media mogul, who gave up his citizenship in 2001 to become a British lord, jeered in an interview with a London newspaper that the prosecutors’ case against him is “hanging like a toilet seat around their necks.”
“I would think he is in total shock,” Canadian author Peter C. Newman, who wrote the first biography of Black in 1982, said after Friday’s verdict. “He really did believe he was innocent.”
While Black remained optimistic during the nearly four-month trial, his socialite wife, the conservative columnist Barbara Amiel, was said by some close to her to have feared the worst from the beginning.
Displaying her frayed nerves in the first days of the trial, the glamorous Lady Black lashed out at a group of reporters, calling one a slut and the rest “vermin.”
Black also eventually showed signs of strain, when last week he flashed a one-finger salute at photographers as he tried to enter the courthouse to learn the contents of a note from the jury.
The British peer likely won’t be successful in appealing the verdict, legal experts said, noting that white-collar crime convictions are rarely overturned.
For his conviction on three counts of mail fraud and a single count of obstruction of justice, Black faces a maximum of 35 years behind bars, a sentence that will probably be reduced to between two and 10 years under federal sentencing guidelines.
He also faces a barrage of civil lawsuits from what’s left of his former newspaper empire and from investors in the U.S. and Canada. Even his former company, Hollinger International, which has since changed its name to Sun Times Media Group, is seeking $542 million in damages from Black.
The government also is seeking the forfeiture of millions worth of Black’s assets, including his posh Palm Beach estate and a $2.6 million diamond ring he bought for his wife.
Though Amiel, 66, faithfully sat behind her husband during the trial, speculation is swirling about whether she will stick with him.
Some expect her to follow the route of the wife of ex-Tyco chief Kozlowski, who slapped her husband with divorce papers during her first visit to him in prison.
“It’s in her best interests to get an alimony settlement and get out,” celebrity divorce lawyer Raoul Felder told The Post. “She should grab whatever she can grab. She’s got to think out theories. In terms of protecting money, the sooner the better.”