Former Jerusalem Post publisher Conrad Black was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison.
Black, 63, was convicted July 13 on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice for bilking millions of dollars from shareholders of his Hollinger International newspaper publishing conglomerate.
The Canadian-born member of the British House of Lords was ordered to report to prison in 12 weeks; he remains free on $21 million bond. Black will serve his time in an American prison, not a Canadian prison as his lawyer requested.
Black was ordered to pay restitution of $6.1 million and was fined $125,000. Prosecutors have calculated the total loss to shareholders to be about $32 million.
Hollinger International controlled 60 percent of Canadian newspapers as well as hundreds of daily newspapers worldwide, including the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun Times, the Montreal Gazette and Britain’s Daily Telegraph, through the mid-1990s.
Black resigned in 2004 as chairman and chief executive officer of Hollinger after an internal investigation sparked by shareholders’ complaints that he was stealing company funds.
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