But a jury of people, whom Black would probably never acknowledge as his peers, has brought him down

THROUGH three months of testimony, a Chicago jury followed two parallel stories.

They heard about Lord Black of Crossharbour, the sophisticated fraudster, who treated the public company he ran as if it were a personal piggy bank, concocted a string of bogus business deals that siphoned $60m into his own pocket, and hoodwinked fellow directors and shareholders. And they also heard about Conrad Black, the brilliant businessman who deserved every penny and every perk, disclosed every dollar and was being persecuted by US prosecutors who wanted another white-collar 'scalp' to add to those bagged at Enron and WorldCom. By convicting Black on four counts and acquitting him on nine, the jury clearly found elements of truth in both, but their verdict seals the title of the tale . . . Conrad Black: fraudster.

It is therefore the story of an extraordinary journey towards respectability and back. When the rebellious Toronto schoolboy, once expelled for selling stolen exam papers to his classmates, renounced his Canadian citizenship to take a seat in the British House of Lords in 2001, he was finally at the centre of an establishment that had been wary of him since his purchase of the Daily Telegraph in 1985. It was the culmination of years of gathering up luminaries such as Henry Kissinger, who sat on the board of Hollinger International, and Margaret Thatcher, who joined an "advisory committee" that amounted to a Hollinger-funded dining club.

Reputation in ruins

Six years later, that constellation of powerful friends is gone, Black's reputation lies in ruins and he faces spending much of the rest of his life behind bars. How has it come to this?

The son of an embittered Toronto businessman ousted from the family firm, Black had bought his first companies even before he had completed law school. From the outset he was an aggressive operator, driven not so much by greed as a certainty that he was cleverer than his rivals . . .and that he was therefore entitled to wealth and influence.

It seems inevitable from this distance that he would settle on the media industry. Early business ventures in mining, retailing and manufacturing all fell away. Nothing captured his imagination like newspapers; nothing else satisfied his ambition to be a man of importance, or his self-image as a man of learning . . . a historian, he said on his marriage certificate in 1978 . . . who was as capable of turning out a biography of Nixon or Roosevelt as he was of knocking out a business opponent.

The jury never got an opportunity to hear the peer on the witness stand, but his "bad attitude" shone through in emails, notes and ripostes to shareholders who challenged him at Hollinger's shareholder meeting. "I'm not prepared to re-enact the French Revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility, " he wrote to fellow executives after investors questioned his pay and perks.

Putting the peer on the stand was clearly out of the question. Outside the courtroom and on the publicity trail for his new book on Nixon, he continued issuing bellicose statements . . . at one point describing the prosecution's case as "hanging like a toilet seat around their neck" . . . and it is difficult to imagine him endearing himself to a jury.

"Evasive and unreliable"

In 2004 Black's attempt to sell control of the Telegraph titles to the Barclay brothers, as prosecutors were closing in, was blocked by a Delaware court. Judge Leo Strine said he found Black an "evasive and unreliable" witness and that his explanations of his motives "did not have the ring of truth". That courtroom defeat ended Black's influence over the media empire he had built over 35 years, and which has since been sold off piecemeal. From the one tiny newspaper in Sherbrooke, Hollinger had become the English-speaking world's thirdlargest newspaper group.

It was Black who put the jewel in Hollinger's crown when he bagged the ailing Telegraph titles in the UK, outfoxing their then owners, the genteel Berry family, with a "rescue" deal that quickly diluted their control.

By its peak at the end of the 1990s, Hollinger encompassed Canada's National Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and hundreds of local papers in North America. These titles provided Black with an entree to high society in Toronto, London and New York, but keeping up with the billionaire set proved costly.

It has become commonplace to blame the press baron's fall on Barbara Amiel, the former Times columnist known for her stringent proIsraeli views. Their marriage in 1992 was his second, her fourth, and it is often insinuated that it was her desire for luxury that drove Black to overreach himself financially. Amiel herself set tongues flapping when she threw open her wardrobe to Vogue in 2002, revealing over a dozen Hermes bags and declaring "my extravagance knows no bounds".

The details of the Blacks' finances have always been opaque, but there were hints during the trial that all was not well. The disputed cash transfers from Hollinger International to his private holding companies in Canada were eaten up by the repayment of loans. Millions of dollars transferred to his bank account in 2000 went straight out again in payments to Jean-Paul Gaultier and Yves Saint Laurent and to the jewellers Graff for a $2.6m diamond ring for Amiel.

Agonising downfall

The peer's downfall came agonisingly slowly. As early as 2002, some shareholders were questioning the large management fees Hollinger was paying Black and his associates.

Then, the following year, came questions from Tweedy, Browne, an investment firm with a reputation for holding clubby boards of directors to account. Why, it wondered, had management personally trousered $42m when Hollinger sold its Canadian papers?

When Tweedy, Browne's questions led Hollinger to investigate the complex financial deals between the company, Black and his network of holding companies, the findings were shocking. A Hollinger-commissioned report concluded that the peer and his associates appeared to have looted Hollinger to the tune of $400m, most of it with the tacit approval of the board but . . . crucially for the outcome of the criminal trial . . . some of it by stealth. As the internal inquiries found undisclosed "non-compete" payments that benefited Black, the peer was first forced to quit as chief executive in November 2003, and removed as chairman two months later.

At no point did he accept that there is a difference between what was good for Conrad Black and what was good for Hollinger's shareholders; indeed, he maintained, they should have been grateful for their association with him. What shone through instead was his sense of entitlement.

And that is why Black's frauds are as singular as the man. They were not driven by greed, like so many financial crimes, or by desperation. They were driven, rather, by arrogance. Last week he was forced to submit to the judgment of 12 ordinary men and women from Chicago . . . his peers, in the eyes of the law, if not his own . . . and they humbled him.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TRIAL

Little luxuries

The defence called it an appeal to "class prejudice", but proceedings came to life when prosecutors offered a glimpse of the Blacks' New York apartment.

Over five years, the couple spent $4.6m flying in decorators and filling the apartment with antiques. They also paid $12,500 for a 'barbiere', or shaving cabinet, with a porcelain bottle that Napoleon used on his Russian campaign.

The defence argued much of this came out of the Blacks' own pockets, justifying his cut-price purchase of the apartment from Hollinger. Black was also accused of using 23 hours of flight time on the company jet, at a cost of $539,000, to go on a two-week private holiday with his wife to French Polynesia in 2001.

Smile, you're on candid camera

Continuing their theme that Black was little more than a "bank robber [in a] suit and tie", the prosecution showed CCTV footage of the peer loading boxes into his chauffeur-driven limo the day after he had been ordered not to move documents from his Toronto office . . .obstructing justice, the jury decided.

Business on the menu

The sumptuous menu for the surprise 60th birthday party thrown by Black for his wife at a lavish New York restaurant in December 2000 included Beluga caviar among the starters. The $62,870 bill, it was revealed, included a $14,847 drinks tab.

Radler rats

The daggerish look shot by Black as David Radler walked into the court said it all. His business partner of three decades had staged one of the biggest betrayals in business and spent more than a week on the witness stand as his side of a plea bargain that keeps him out of prison.

The defence called him a liar more than 100 times; he said he covered up his frauds at first to protect himself and Black, but he wasn't lying this time.