Jury gets Conrad Black case

CHICAGO — A federal judge sent the racketeering and fraud trial of one-time media mogul Conrad Black and other former Hollinger International executives to a jury Wednesday after 14 weeks of testimony from dozens of witnesses.

The deliberations cap a trial that probed both the complex and the sensational. Its focus ranged from a blow-by-blow of Hollinger's newspaper transactions to the high-flying lifestyle of the aristocratic Black and whether he siphoned corporate money to pay for a vacation in Bora Bora, a surprise birthday party for his wife and apartments on Park Avenue in New York.

Jurors were asked to decide whether Black, 62, and co-defendants Peter Atkinson, Jack Boultbee and Mark Kipnis stole millions of dollars from the newspaper company that should have gone to shareholders and lied to federal investigators. All have pleaded not guilty.

Judge Amy St. Eve turned over the case to the jury of 12 after reading instructions for 48 minutes. The jury deliberated for about 2 ½ hours before going home for the day.

Eric Sussman, lead government prosecutor, earlier wrapped up his rebuttal statements to 25 hours of closing arguments by defense lawyers, focusing again on the controversial fees paid to the Hollinger executives from newspaper sales that are at the heart of the case.

The defense says the payments were made to ensure that Hollinger would not compete against the new owners of its newspapers; the government contends they are bogus.

"The false pretense is that this is noncompete money," Sussman said. "It's really a bonus."

The outcome may hinge on the testimony of F. David Radler, Black's longtime partner and the No. 2 executive at Hollinger who has pleaded guilty to the alleged scheme.

Radler, who expects to get a relatively lenient 29-month sentence in return for his cooperation, said during eight days of testimony last month that Black personally approved millions of dollars in payments to himself and others from the sale of community newspapers owned by Hollinger.

Under cross-examination, he then took a beating from defense attorneys who claimed he lied to a federal grand jury and then again at the trial to cut a favorable deal.

In closing arguments, the prosecution accused Black and his three former Hollinger associates of fleecing shareholders out of more than $60 million and creating an elaborate but bogus paper trail to cover their tracks.

Defense lawyers blasted the government's case, saying it was based largely on the unsupported word of "a serial liar" — Radler. They also accused prosecutors of trying to sow prejudice among the middle-class Chicago jurors by stressing the "champagne and caviar" lifestyle of the wealthy Black. .

Lawyers and courthouse observers were loathe to predict how long the jury will take to sort out the 43 charges in the case.

"I can't imagine with all the documents that this jury have to look at — and I think that they've been pretty devoted to their job — that it's going to be a short time," Edward Greenspan, Black's Canadian defense attorney, told reporters.

The former Hollinger newspaper empire, which once extended to large dailies in Canada, London and Jerusalem, now consists of the Chicago Sun-Times and about 100 community newspapers in the Chicago metropolitan area. The company has been renamed Sun-Times Media Group.