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 Former media mogul Conrad Black was released from prison on bond pending the outcome of his appeal, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the "honest services" law, an appeals court ruled. (John Gress/Reuters files) |
Deposed mogul Conrad Black is obviously "glad" and "jubilant" to be released from prison, he recounts in a column published Saturday in the National Post.
However, he writes that he's "also grateful for many of the relationships I had formed" and he had been "enlightened by my observation of American justice on the other side of the wall; and happy to have got on well in an environment very foreign to any I had known before."
Black met his wife at their property in Palm Beach, Fla. on July 21 after serving 28 months as the "guest of the U.S. government."
"I was delighted to be back in my home, which the prosecutors had tried to seize for years," he writes. "For the first time since I was last there, I enjoyed pristine quiet, free of loudspeakers, screamed argument, and the snoring of a hundred men. I had a glass of wine, and waited for Barbara, to celebrate the happiest of all wedding anniversaries."
Black was released on July 21 from a low-security prison in Coleman, Fla. after friend Roger Hertog posted a U.S. $2 million bail.
The 65-year-old has to remain in the United States until his next court appearance in a decision made by Judge Amy St. Eve on July 23 in Chicago. He is to return to court on Aug. 16 where his lawyers will provide more detailed documents regarding his finances.
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Black was serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence after being convicted of defrauding shareholders out of $6.1 million and obstruction of justice in July 2007.