Never, for a moment, did Conrad Black believe it would come to this. The former newspaper owner spent his three-month trial glowering defiantly around Chicago's Dirksen federal courthouse, dispensing scornful put-downs of the "Nazis" and "pygmies" behind his so-called persecution.
A granite mask hid any flicker of doubt. Such was his confidence that Lord Black of Crossharbour even commissioned 150 T-shirts for his friends and family bearing the words "Conrad will win".
For a man used to the high life, jail will be a tremendous shock. But the Conservative peer will have time to ponder what he has lost. Wealthy, titled, erudite and with a glamorous wife beside him, Black was a man who became addicted to luxury.
With homes in London, New York, Palm Beach and Toronto, he counted Princess Michael of Kent, Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger among his friends. For the brewery boss's son from Montreal, it was never quite enough. Black's taste for opulence outpaced his income from his Hollinger media empire. He furnished his apartment with antique Chinese carpets, holidayed in Polynesia and threw a $62,000 star-studded birthday party for his wife, Barbara Amiel. When cash ran short, he resorted to embezzlement.
His crimes began in 1998 with a phone call to his lifelong business partner, David Radler.
At the time, Hollinger was selling off its long tail of local newspapers in America and Canada - and Black suggested siphoning off a sliver of the proceeds.
As prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer put it, the pair were cautious in what they took from each newspaper sale: "They'd just take a little piece - the tiniest piece. Some of those deals were worth many billions."
Black apparently believed he could do what he liked. He routinely milked the business for perks, using the company jet for a holiday to the Polynesian island of Bora Bora and getting Hollinger to reimburse him for the furnishing of his New York apartment - including the purchase of a $4,300 electric towel warmer and a $12,500 vanity stand complete with a shaving bottle used by Napoleon.
Many of Black's explanations shattered under examination. Black insisted his wife's birthday party, for which he billed Hollinger more than $42,000, was a "business event". But an examination of the seating plan revealed that he had chosen to eat with the Dame Edna Everage comedian Barry Humphries and a clutch of society wives, leaving business associate Donald Trump on the other side of the room.
As for his $570,000 trip on Hollinger's corporate jet to Bora Bora, Black maintained that directors felt his support for Israel meant he was at risk from terrorists on commercial aircraft. "Utter nonsense," testified the company's big-name non-executives.
Nevertheless, the jury concluded that such perks, however unethical, were not illegal.
The scales of justice truly swung against Black when his erstwhile friend and close associate, David Radler, took the stand.
Radler, who has pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of 20 months in prison, gave an assured performance, admitting his own complicity but pointing to Black as the fraud's mastermind.
Maintaining his extravagant lifestyle to the end, Black lodged his family at Chicago's Ritz-Carlton hotel. All his life, Black has disdained his birthplace of Canada in favour of America, seeing the US as a land of opportunity and free-market dynamism.
But shaken by scandals surrounding Enron and Worldcom, the American legal system punishes white-collar crimes ruthlessly.
A Black biographer, George Tombs, says: "The bubble is bursting - he's romanticised America so much as the land of the brave with a free market, private healthcare and tough people who've waged war all over the world. Now he's come face to face with another America - a hardball America."
- (Guardian service) ...
