US court agrees to hear Black appeal

Disgraced press baron Conrad Black has been handed a "get out of jail ... maybe" card by the United States Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear an appeal against his conviction for fraud.

The entrepreneur, who renounced his Canadian citizenship to become Lord Black of Crossharbour in the House of Lords, is serving a 6 year sentence in Florida for fraud and obstruction of justice.

He was convicted in 2007 on three counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice, after a jury decided he and senior colleagues had illegally enriched themselves by inserting bogus clauses into asset sales by his Hollinger International newspaper conglomerate.

Black's lawyers argued that Hollinger itself did not lose any money because of the so-called "non-compete payments" to Black and others. Appeals courts in different parts of the US have taken differing views on whether a company must actually lose money for a fraud to have been committed.

The Supreme Court will hear both sides of the case during its 2009-10 sitting, which starts in October. Its ruling could ultimately have an impact on a broad swath of white-collar cases.

Lawyers for Jeffrey Skilling, the chief executive of the collapsed energy group Enron, believe it could give their client grounds for another appeal.

Black has continued to protest his innocence in newspaper columns written from jail, and his attorneys said they would consider seeking the peer's release pending the Supreme Court hearing.

Last June, a Chicago appeals court upheld Black's convictions, saying the evidence showed he engaged in conventional fraud. Together with four associates, Black siphoned off US$6.1 million ($10.2 million) that should have gone into Hollinger coffers.

- INDEPENDENT