Back in late 2007, Canadian(born) press baron (literally, he was in Britain’s House of Lords) Conrad Black was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for fraud and obstruction of justice. (During the trial, the haughty Black memorably called his prosecutors “Nazis” and “pygmies.”) Black, at his peak, was a best-selling author and the corporate force behind some of the world’s major papers, including the Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and the National Post. He was released back into the loving arms of his glamorous wife, Barbara Amiel, in July of 2010 after a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in which the scope of the law used to convict him was narrowed. Several of the fraud and obstruction charges were lifted, but he was awaiting sentencing on the remaining one. Today, the judge that originally sentenced him ordered him back to prison to serve out the rest of the 42 months of his sentence. (He’d only served 29 so far.) Upon hearing the news, his glamorous wife, Barbara Amiel, glamorously fainted and had to be taken out of the courtroom by medical personnel.
Ex-media mogul Conrad Black sent back to prison [Reuters]
Related: Michael Wolff’s New York profile of Baron Black of Crossharbour, from before his fall [NYM]
