Smash hit

The original shareholder revolt against Black was set off by an eight-page spread in Vogue in August 2002 in which Lady Black showed off her wardrobe of designer labels and collection of more than 100 handmade Manolo Blahnik shoes, boasting: “I have an extravagance that knows no bounds.”

An internal probe found that Black ran a “corporate kleptocracy” that had siphoned off more than $400 million, about 95 per cent of the company’s profits, from 1997 to 2003.

After a four-month trial, the jury convicted him of three charges of fraud as well as obstruction of justice, acquitting him of nine other charges. A pre-sentencing report by a probation officer found the fraud convictions involved a total of $6.1 million.

Black has claimed the verdict as a partial victory and vowed to overturn his four convictions on appeal.

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

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BACKGROUND

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But sentencing consultants caution that Black will suffer more in prison if he cannot quench his desire for vindication.

“The guys who do the hardest time are the guys who fight and just keep on fighting,” said Herbert Hoelter, of the National Centre on Institutions and Alternatives, whose clients have included Alfred Taubman, the jailed Sotheby’s chairman, and Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, the financiers. “If he goes in there thinking he is the biggest travesty of justice, he is going to have a rude awakening. He may be in a dorm with a 25-year-old black guy serving a mandatory 25 years for a minor drug offence. No matter how bad it is, there are 25 guys you can look at who will have it worse.”

Brian Stewart, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist who has known Black since their teenage years, predicted that his old friend will be able to adjust to jail.

“I think he has coped quite well given what he faces and the stress he has been through. I have talked to him on the phone regularly and he is still reading a lot of books and writing. There is no sense of him being really down. He is obviously disappointed with the verdicts. He does not seem shaken. He does not seem wildly nervous. He does not seem different. We can still talk about old times,” he said.

“I think when the institutional part appears, he will just do his time very quietly and studiously and try to read and write as best he can. He won’t be perturbed by lousy food and things like that,” he said.

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