Conrad Black seeks fresh appeal of his fraud case

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month upheld the convictions of Black and three others. But the defendants asked Wednesday for a hearing in which all the active judges on the court would consider the case.

The 62-year-old British baron, known as Lord Black of Crossharbour, was convicted with co-defendants in July 2007 of defrauding the sprawling Hollinger International media empire he once ran of $6 million.

Black also was convicted of obstruction of justice for removing boxes of documents from his office in Toronto. He was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison.

Hollinger International once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph of London, the Jerusalem Post and hundreds of community newspapers across this country and Canada. The only large paper remaining is the Sun-Times, which changed the company name to Sun-Times Media Group.

So-called en banc hearings are frequently requested in big cases but rarely granted. A sharply divided appeals court refused to grant such a hearing to former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, convicted of racketeering and fraud.

If the appeals court refuses Black as well, his next step most likely will be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The opinion denying Black's appeal focused on a deal involving a Hollinger subsidiary, APC, which sold most of its newspapers and ended up owning just one weekly, in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Black and several other executives got $5.5 million for agreeing not to compete with APC for three years after leaving Hollinger.

The opinion written by Judge Richard A. Posner said it was "ridiculous" to think that the executives might set up a business in Mammoth Lakes.

Black and his co-defendants have contended the money was not really noncompete payments but were characterized that way to get a tax break in Canada, where Black was born and long kept his office.