Arrogant corporate criminal is free

This is absolutely sickening. Black is now a free man and didn't have to serve his full sentence. Black was previously convicted in 2007 on a very serious obstruction of justice charge. Regardless, he's now likely kicking back at his Florida mansion (which appears to have been sold, haha) with a big smirk on his face. But after the IRS are through with him (Black is being sued for $71 million in back taxes by the IRS), hopefully that smirk will be long gone.

From the Toronto Star:

Conrad Black slipped out a back door of Coleman Federal Penitentiary Wednesday afternoon for his first taste of freedom in 28 months. The convicted former media baron eluded a waiting pack of reporters at the front of the Florida prison around 2.30 p.m., according to The Star’s Mitch Potter.

He was expected to join his wife, Barbara Amiel, at their Palm Beach mansion where she has been living part-time to be near him. It’s not clear what their stake in the mansion is any longer.

His release came just a few hours after a friend and conservative philanthropist, Roger Hertog, signed a $2 million bond in a Chicago courtroom.

Black’s first official appointment is a 12:30 p.m. (Chicago time) hearing Friday before Judge Amy St. Eve to hear the details of his bail conditions.

Black, 65, will have to remain in the continental U.S. pending a new trial.

Hertog, an American, created the Palm Beach-based Hertog Foundation, which holds $30 million in assets. He was a part-owner of The New Republic and the defunct New York Sun and is vice-chairman emeritus of Alliance Capital Management Corp.

In his glory days, Black surrendered his Canadian citizenship to assume the ermine robes of the British House of Lords and the title of Lord of Crossharbour but still holds a British passport, although it expired in 2009.

Under his bail terms, he cannot renew it.

Since his conviction, he has also surrendered his real estate realm. An investment firm is said to own his Palm Beach mansion, his New York apartment was sold for $10.5 million and his London mansion went for $27 million.

In a column in the National Post in April, Black denied his Palm Beach house had been sold. Bloomberg News, however, said local property records indicate a February sale for $11.6 million.

His wife, Barbara Amiel, has been living much of the time in the Palm Beach mansion 400 kilometres from the prison and visiting regularly, according to the Palm Beach Post.

“Until I have him in my arms, I dare not say anything,” she told The National Post in an email.

“I was thinking about Lena Horne at the time, ‘Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together,’ which just about sums it up for me,” she wrote in a recent column in Maclean’s magazine.

Black, too, has continued to write while in prison, including book reviews for the National Review and his own book which will be published by McClelland & Stewart.

He still owns a heavily mortgaged Bridle Path mansion he inherited from his family in the 1970s in Toronto.

Black controlled Hollinger International and owned a number of major newspapers including the Daily Telegraph in the U.K., the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and the National Post.

“He’s still a wealthy man but his wealth will be affected by the outcome of outstanding lawsuits against him,” friend and former Hollinger International executive Peter White told Bloomberg.

Black is being sued for $71 million (U.S.) in back taxes by the Internal Revenue Service, which alleges he failed to report $120 million in U.S. income during the period 1998 to 2003.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled his conviction on three mail fraud counts was under a law that was too broad. Black and other Hollinger executives were found guilty in 2007 of illegally siphoning $6 million out of the Hollinger International newspaper empire for their own use.

Because it was not a bribe or a kickback, former lead prosecutor Eric Sussman said, it no longer fit the definition under which Black had been convicted.

The high court ruling also didn’t affect the more serious obstruction of justice count against Black, related to him spiriting boxes of documents out of his Toronto offices to keep them from investigators.

“I think that this will be one of those situations where Mr. Black will have maybe won the battle but lost the war,” said Sussman, Chicago head of white-collar litigation at the law firm Kaye Scholer.

The majority of Black’s 6 ½-year sentence was related to a conviction for obstruction, “which no one, the Supreme Court or the court of appeals, has given any indication they are going to touch,” he said.

Sussman admitted he was surprised by Monday’s decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago to grant Black bail.

“But quite frankly, I’ve been surprised quite frequently in this case,” Sussman said in an email.

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