Conrad Black has rarely backed away from a fight, locking horns with powerful adversaries including fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien.
Yesterday, he lost perhaps the most important battle of his life when a jury in Chicago found him guilty of multiple counts of criminal fraud, related to allegations that he stole millions from Hollinger International, the former newspaper publishing empire he once controlled.
In the 15-week trial, the verbose Black was described as snotty and arrogant by his own lawyers, who argued that that did not make him guilty.
Prosecutors said Black and his former associates were nothing more than greedy thieves.
"I would think he is in total shock," said Canadian author Peter C Newman, who wrote the first biography of Black in 1982. "He really did believe he was innocent. This is his legacy. Those of us who have followed this case are not surprised."
The charges tarnished the former media baron's legacy, bringing him from the corridors of Britain's House of Lords to a courthouse in Chicago. Black, who once invoked Orson Welles's famous words in Citizen Kane: "People will think what I tell them to think," was forced to watch as investigators combed through his finances, amid allegations that he used company money to fund a lavish high society lifestyle.
Black anticipated the jurors' lack of sympathy last year when he argued that he could not get a fair trial because a typical Chicago juror "does not reside in more than one residence, employ servants or a chauffeur, enjoy lavish furniture, or host expensive parties".
The criminal trial was a hard comedown for a man who hobnobbed with the likes of Henry Kissinger and turned a small investment in a pair of Canadian newspapers into what was once the world's third-largest newspaper empire.
Black's hold on the public imagination was just as strong. His colourful personality, bombastic prose and outspoken hard-right political views always ensured him a high profile, particularly in his native Canada.
"Humility is a good quality, but it can be overdone," he told a newspaper in 1994.
The once verbose mogul fell uncharacteristically silent as the case progressed. - (Reuters)
