A federal judge ordered the release yesterday of disgraced media mogul Conrad Black on an unsecured two million dollar bond as he appeals his 2007 fraud conviction.
US District Judge Amy St Eve agreed to Mr Black’s release on bond at a hearing with the proviso that he not leave the country until further notice, and ordered him to appear in court on Friday.
“Mr Black should appear before me where I will admonish him on the conditions of his release,” she said.
Mr Black, 65, who has served more than two years of a six and a half year prison sentence, is appealing his conviction for fraud on the basis of a Supreme Court ruling in his favour last month.
Miguel Estrada, Mr Black’s attorney, said Conrad would probably go to his home in Palm Beach, Florida after his release from a federal penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, but his lawyers were working to obtain permission for him to travel to Toronto.
“We have to leave it up to the judge as to whether or when he will be permitted to go back to Canada,” Mr Estrada said.
St Eve ordered that Black be deprived of his passport and report to a court officer on his finances,
“He cannot leave the United States until further order from this court,” the judge said.
Mr Black’s two million dollar bond was put up by Roger Hertog, a businessman and friend of the Canadian-born Black, a British citizen. Mr Hertog was in court, but declined comment on the developments.
Mr Black once ran the world’s third largest media empire with such titles as Britain’s Daily Telegraph and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Flamboyant in lifestyle and brutal in business, he counted politicians and pop stars among his entourage as he built up a towering newspaper empire.
But he was forced to quit as head of the holding company Hollinger when he was charged with siphoning off millions of dollars from the firm, notably when it began divesting its Canadian and US publications in 2000.
Mr Black and associates were convicted of stealing 3.5 million dollars by awarding themselves tax-free bonuses from the sell-offs of newspapers, without the approval of Hollinger’s board.
They were accused of skimming off some 60 million dollars in all between 1999 and 2001.