Disgraced media baron Conrad Black was sentenced to six and half years in prison yesterday for raiding the coffers of his once mighty newspaper empire and trying to cover up his crime.
Judge Amy St. Eve scolded Black - a once powerful owner of newspapers in Chicago, London and Jerusalem who became a British lord - as she imposed the jail term, which was less than the 20 years sought by prosecutors.
'You've committed a very serious crime, Mr Black,' said St. Eve, who also imposed a $125,000 fine and ordered him to forfeit some $6.1m to the government, some of which could be distributed to victims.
It was a spectacular fall for the defiant Black, 63, who has continued to profess his innocence and vowed to return to professional life despite being found guilty on four counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice.
Black, who did not testify at his trial, spoke briefly before his sentencing of his disappointment and regret that the empire he built from the ground up had collapsed after he was ousted.
The judge released him on a bond giving him 12 weeks to sort out his affairs before reporting directly to prison, sometime early in 2008.
The son of a wealthy brewery executive, Black bought his first newspaper in his 20s and rapidly expanded his reach across the globe, buying such prestigious titles as London's Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times.
His troubles began after Hollinger International, the US-based holding company which controlled the empire, began divesting its Canadian and US publications. Black and his associates gave themselves non-compete clauses tied to the sales agreements.
While these agreements are typical in media transactions - they protect the new owners from having Hollinger launch new publications to compete with the ones it had just sold - they were not all cleared by Hollinger's board and were essentially massive tax-free bonuses for Black and his associates.
Shareholders began to complain about the bonuses in 2002 as Hollinger posted huge losses.
Black was eventually forced to launch an independent, internal investigation headed by former US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Richard Breeden.
Breeden eventually dubbed Hollinger a 'corporate kleptocracy' and claimed more than 95% of the company's net income was lost in bonuses to senior executives between 1997 and 2003.
A criminal investigation soon followed but it was the decision of his long-term business associate, David Radler, to cooperate with prosecutors that led to Black's fall.
Radler was painted as a liar out to betray a friend in exchange for a shorter sentence, but his testimony helped get Black and his associates convicted on four of 12 fraud counts. They were cleared of tax evasion and racketeering charges.
Black alone was convicted of obstruction of justice after being filmed loading boxes of documents from his Toronto office into his car when the SEC notified him he was under investigation.
