Black returns to Toronto mansion
Wife, dogs welcome ex-media baron home
Conrad Black returned to his Toronto home Friday after being released from prison in the U.S.
Dressed in a white dress shirt and blue jacket, he smiled as he kissed his wife, Barbara Amiel, outside their Toronto mansion.
Earlier in the day, he was taken from a federal institution in Miami and detained by U.S. immigration officials before returning to Canada.
Black has now finished serving his more-than-three-year prison stint for one fraud and one obstruction of justice charge related to his past management of Hollinger Inc.
The 67-year-old was able to return to the Toronto home he shares with his wife after receiving a one-year temporary resident permit from the government this week.
The Montreal-born businessman is now a British citizen, having given up his Canadian citizenship in 2001 in order to accept a peerage in Britain’s House of Lords.
Peter White, a friend and former business partner of Black’s, said he plans to visit with him in the near future, but added Amiel is likely to insist Black take time to rest for at least a week or so.
“I’m delighted,” White said of Black’s release. “I think he has been an exemplary server of his penalty. As we all know, he has never admitted that he’s done anything wrong and he’s written a vast book to demonstrate his view. I think that despite him not believing that he ever did anything wrong, he’s more or less gone uncomplainingly through 42 months of imprisonment – quite a long time.”
Black is the former chairman of Hollinger Inc., which owned a stake in Sterling Newspapers and Saturday Night magazine in Canada and the Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom.
In 1992, he bought a stake in the Southam newspaper chain in Canada, and six years later founded the National Post newspaper. The paper is now part of Postmedia Network Inc., which owns The Gazette.
Black was forced out of his global publishing empire in 2004 after shareholders in the U.S. questioned payments he and other Hollinger executives received from the sale of corporate assets.
Black was convicted on three fraud charges and obstruction in 2007 and began serving a 6 ½ -year sentence in 2008.