Lord Black’s fraud trial gave the world a glimpse into the lavish lifestyle of a press baron who even his own lawyer described as “different from you and me”.

Jurors heard about Black’s $4.6 million renovation of his Park Avenue flat, his $62,000 surprise 60th birthday for his wife at New York’s La Grenouille restaurant, and their trip together aboard the company G4 jet to the Pacific island of Bora Bora.

By the end of the 14-week trial the glitter had worn off. His fellow company director, Henry Kissinger, never came to the witness stand and the property mogul Donald Trump failed to make a much-anticipated appearance.

Prosecutors dropped plans to use a disc of 11,000 “marital e-mails” between Black and his wife.

The romantic hero who has run out of plots

Conrad Black, who once dressed up as Cardinal Richelieu, faces the prospect of donning an orange prison jumpsuit instead

Multimedia

• Lord Black: a life in pictures

BACKGROUND

• Lord Black stays silent in defence

• The face: Black Narcissus

• Black 'was $60m robber in suit and tie'

• Black asked Trump to sing his praises

• Daughter steals show in Black’s trial

Related Internet Links

• Analysis, video and accusations from the Lord Black trial

Related Links

• Conrad Black found guilty of fraud

• Timeline: rise and fall of Lord Black

The guts of the often-complex case was $14.8 million that Black received in so-called “non-compete” fees as the publicly-traded US company Hollinger International sold off its assets from 1998-2001.

“The Non-Competes" - 6 fraud charges (max 5 years each) - 3 guilty, 3 not guilty

After building the third largest newspaper empire in the world, Black decided in the late 1990s to sell off most the company’s titles in the US and Canada. Prosecutors charged that as he did so, he and other top executives siphoned off more than $60 million dollars in bogus “non-compete” payments in return for promising the buyers that they would not to set up rival publications.

In one deal, according to prosecutors, Black got paid not to compete with himself because he part-owned the company that paid the fee. In another, the government said, he never signed a “non-compete” pledge but took the money anyway. In a third deal, the buyer flatly refused to wire the money directly to him, so one of Black’s co-accused hand-wrote his name onto the bank transfer.

Prosecutors conceded that Black was entitled to the $12 million “non-compete” fee he received from the sale of The National Post, the Canadian daily he founded. But they charged that he also diverted some of the sale proceeds to fellow executives.

Racketeering - 1 charge (max 20 years) Not guilty

Prosecutors argued that the repeated payment of “non-competes” showed a pattern of “racketeering activity” - a charge more commonly associated with crime families and street gangs. To reach a guilty verdict on racketeering, the jury had to find that two or more linked frauds took place.

Tax Fraud - 2 charges (Max 3 years each) Not guilty

Because of the alleged diversion of the “non-compete” money, Black was also charged with causing false tax returns to be filed in 2000 and 2001.

Perks - 3 charges (max 5 years each) - Not guilty

(A) THE PARTY: Black was also accused of using $40,000 of company money to throw a $62,000 surprise birthday 60th birthday party for his wife at New York’s La Grenouille restaurant on December 4, 2000, with a guest list that included six billionaires;

(B) THE BORA BORA TRIP: Black was charged with billing the company with half the cost of using the corporate jet for a 23 hour round-trip flight to a holiday with his wife on the French Polynesian island of Bora Bora;

(C) THE PARK AVENUE CORPORATE FLAT: Black was accused of buying the corporate flat on New York’s Park Avenue in 2000 at a below-market price of $3 million - the same price the company had purchased it for six years earlier.

Obstruction of Justice - 1 charge (max 20 years) - Guilty

Shortly after 5 pm on May 20, 2005, Black was captured on CCTV moving 13 boxes of files out of his Toronto office into his car - just one day after his lawyers had received a fax warning them that the US stock market regulator would soon be requesting documents from him. The boxes were eventually returned - but not before the grainy CCTV pictures were broadcast repeatedly in Canada.

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