Conrad Black's racketeering trial to begin

Former newspaper tycoon Conrad Black’s racketeering and fraud trial is getting under way in the US.

Defence lawyers are seeking jurors who will not turn sour over the Canadian billionaire’s Park Avenue condo, antique Rolls Royce and expense-account vacation on the Pacific island paradise of Bora Bora.

“They’re not going to be looking for housewives and union members, they’re going to be looking for stockholders, for aristocrats – just like him,” veteran Chicago trial lawyer Robin Potter said as prosecutors and defence lawyers geared up for the start of jury selection today.

Black, 62, may no longer be chairman and chief executive of the sprawling Hollinger International newspaper empire, former owners of the Daily Telegraph, but he still commands attention from reporters, scores of whom are in Chicago to cover the trial.

The media frenzy is expected to be such that court officials have set aside two overflow courtrooms where the proceedings will be shown on closed-circuit television.

Hollinger also once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the Toronto-based National Post and the Jerusalem Post, as well as hundreds of community newspapers.

The Toronto, London and Jerusalem papers have been sold and the company name has been changed to Sun-Times Media Group.

Mr Black is charged with selling off hundreds of community newspapers and pocketing millions of dollars in payments from the buyers in exchange for promises not to compete in the markets where the newspapers circulated.

Prosecutors say the money should have gone to the shareholders.

Mr Black also is charged with tapping the Hollinger till to pay for a holiday on Bora Bora, use of the company plane and most of a $62,000 (€47,000) birthday party for his wife, conservative writer Barbara Amiel Black.

US District Judge Amy St. Eve, a one-time federal prosecutor who helped win a corruption conviction against former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, is presiding over Mr Black’s estimated three-month trial.

Prosecutors say that if convicted on all counts, the proud, silver-maned former corporate titan and author of an acclaimed Franklin D. Roosevelt biography could be sent to prison for 101 years. But the judge would decide the sentence, and a much lesser term would be likely.

Going on trial with Black are three executives who were in his inner circle at Hollinger.

They are: Jack Boultbee, 63, of Vancouver, an accountant who was Hollinger’s chief financial officer; Peter Atkinson, 59, of Toronto, who was general counsel; and Mark Kipnis, 60, a lawyer who served as corporate secretary in Hollinger’s Chicago headquarters.

Black’s is the latest big trial for US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who last week obtained the perjury conviction in Washington of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The government’s opening statement will be on Monday if all goes according to schedule.