Conrad Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, felt like “geriatric freaks” on the controversial trip to Bora Bora that is a focus of his fraud trial in the United States, and he “almost drowned snorkelling”.

Lord Black of Crossharbour, the former chairman of The Daily Telegraph, is charged with skimming off $60 million from his newspaper empire, including the use of a corporate jet for a holiday in 2001 on the French Polynesian island.

But in a colourful e-mail made public by prosecutors at his trial in Chicago, the loquacious peer described Bora Bora as anything but paradise.

“We just got back yesterday from a shambles of a trip to the South Pacific, where I came down with bronchitis and almost drowned snorkelling as a result,” Lord Black wrote to Seth Lipsky, now the editor of the New York Sun newspaper.

“We felt like geriatric freaks among a sea of honeymooners – loutish young men and their perky wives,” he complained.

“Shortly after we arrived on Bora Bora we discovered the island was in the throes of a dengue fever epidemic and we spent the rest of our time there applying insect repellent and sweltering indoors.”

Prosecutors introduced the e-mail into evidence on Tuesday to show that the trip to Bora Bora was not a legitimate company expense. They presented a copy of Lord Black’s customs declaration when he returned to the United States, describing the purpose of the trip as “personal”.

Prosecutors also displayed the $336-a-day (£170) tickets that Lord Black and his wife bought to attend the Seattle Opera’s four-day performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle during a stopover on the way back.

After questions were asked, Lord Black offered to pay half the $565,326 (£286,000) cost of the round-trip flight to Bora Bora.

The defence argued that Lord Black was entitled to claim the US portion of the trip, which included the segment between Seattle and Honolulu, as a business expense and was actually overcharged by the company.

Edward Greenspan, his lawyer, called the trip “the most expensive flight to Bora Bora in the history of mankind”. He said two years after the Bora Bora trip, the company’s audit committee agreed that senior management should use private jets instead of commercial flights because of “security and terrorism concerns”.

But Julie Ruder, a prosecutor, mocked the idea that Lord Black was entitled to claim every US flight as a company expense. “Does that mean you could take the jet to Disney World?” she asked, provoking objections from the defence.

“Was there any policy in place requiring Conrad Black to use the company plane for his personal vacation?” she asked Fred Creasey, then-comp-troller of the newspaper conglomerate. “No,” he replied.

Jurors were shown an e-mail from August 2002 in which Lord Black said a policy regarding the jets should distinguish “business, quasi-business and nonbusiness expenses”. He wrote: “As I have said before, a degree of accommodation with contemporary norms is what we need. We will not abdicate and declare all perquisites to be corrupt.”

In the e-mail, Lord Black expressed concern that his former right-hand man, David Radler, would resist restrictions on use of the jets. Mr Radler, who will be the government's star witness after pleading guilty in exchange for a lenient 29-month sentence, saw shareholders as “conspirators trying to take the fun out of business”, he wrote.

Lord Black added: “David has always put out of mind the implications of being a public company.”

Prosecutors will soon get their hands on potential new evidence after a Canadian court’s decision to order the transfer of documents that Lord Black was seen removing from his Toronto office.

He has been charged with obstruction of justice after being caught on CCTV loading 13 boxes of files into his car. The boxes were returned and US prosecutors said they would soon be shipped to Chicago.

Judge Amy St Eve this week excused a female juror, making it slightly less likely that Lord Black will be judged by an all-women jury. The judge has refused the Chicago Tribune’s request to identify the jurors. But 13 of the 17-person panel, which included 12 jurors and five alternates, are women.

Lord Black’s lawyer asked on Tuesday for the judge to declare a mistrial when the prosecution questioned Mr Creasey about whether Peter Atkinson, Lord Black’s codefendant, had ever referred to “noncompete” payments made to company executives as “bonuses”. Judge St Eve immediately rejected the request.

The trial continues.

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