Conrad Black jury deadlocked

CHICAGO (CNN) -- Jurors weighing the fate of Canadian-born former tycoon Conrad Black and three other defendants failed to reach a verdict Tuesday after nine days of deliberations.

Black and three co-defendants are charged with skimming $60 million from Hollinger International, a newspaper publisher, and lying about it to federal investigators.

Late in the afternoon, the jury's nine men and three women told the judge they were deadlocked; U.S. Judge Amy St. Eve of the Northern District of Illinois ordered them to continue deliberating.

If convicted, the 62-year-old jetsetter could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Because he is British, he could serve his time in the United States or be transferred to a prison in England.

"If he loses, he's going to look like one of the Wild West criminals who was brought down by the federal government," said Terry Sullivan, a legal analyst. "If he wins, he's bigger than life again."

During the trial, which began last March, U.S. federal prosecutors described the lavish, eccentric lifestyles of Lord Black and his wife, Lady Barbara Amiel, a journalist.

The case centered on an alleged corporate victim. Unlike the Enron case, this one resulted in no major loss of jobs, worker suffering or company collapse.

Nearly all the prosecution witnesses have been granted immunity or allowed to plea bargain.

Black is "sort of (a) bad-boy celebrity," said George Tombs, who is writing his second biography about Black, to be published this fall. "This is somebody who's had tremendous power and he's lost it."

Legal troubles for Hollinger International and Black began in mid-2004, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published a report alleging "racketeering" and "corporate kleptocracy," which led to a $1.25 billion racketeering suit against Hollinger and Black.

That fall, after a U.S. federal judge threw out the racketeering suit, Black resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of Hollinger.

Months later, the SEC filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Black, Hollinger's former deputy chairman and chief operating officer, David Radler, and Hollinger.

Black, Radler and other top executives didn't understand that investors had handed over their money in order to make more money, not to gain entree to a "private gentleman's club," said Tombs, who added that the defendants "continued operating like they did in the '50s from the old Toronto days, wining, dining and schmoozing."

Federal prosecutors, under the guidance of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, said Black and the other defendants -- Peter Atkinson, Jack Boultbee and Mark Kipnis -- defrauded shareholders of Hollinger International by collecting "non-compete" payments from the sales of media holdings.

In a non-compete, the seller agrees -- in exchange for a payment -- not to compete in the buyer's market. The prosecution argued that the payments ended up in the pockets of the defendants, as tax-free bonuses, instead of in the company coffers.

"Why were these men getting paid for non-competes that the buyer never requested?" asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Sussman in his closing statement. "Why were they entitled to take this money and lie about it?"

The defense lawyers said shareholders and company directors had approved the payments.

The prosecution had originally hoped that Radler would be their star witness. In exchange for a reduced jail sentence, Radler pleaded guilty in 2005 to fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

But near the end of 25 hours of closing arguments, the prosecution changed course and instead labeled him as a "criminal" and "fraudster."

"You do not need to believe a single word David Radler told you to convict each and every one of these defendants," Sussman told the jury.

Black did not testify.

Tombs described Black as a modern-day Citizen Kane, a man who "had it all and lost it all."

In the early 1990s, Hollinger controlled 60 percent of Canadian newspapers in addition to hundreds of dailies worldwide, including the Chicago Sun Times, the Montreal Gazette, Britain's Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post.

Tombs said Black reveled in the pageantry of power. In 1999, the British government moved to make him a life peer of the British House of Lords, but Canada does not allow its citizens to carry the title.

Black overcame that obstacle in 2001, when he renounced his Canadian citizenship and became Lord Black of Crossharbour, named for the subway stop near The Daily Telegraph. E-mail to a friend

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