Disgraced Black 'plotting his comeback'

LIKE his idol Napoleon Bonaparte, fallen Press baron Lord Black of Crossharbour may be down, but is already plotting his comeback. In his first interview in more than two years, Black has told business magazine Fortune that we will be hearing more about him in future.

'I have no doubt that mothers in America use my name to frighten their children into finishing their vegetables,' Black said. 'But this is not a permanent state of affairs.'

In the interview, he casts himself as the aggrieved party, saying he is a 'victim of corporate governance terrorists'. He says that two years of Security and Exchange Commission investigations has produced 'mountains of salacious headlines' but no finding of wrongdoing by regulators or the courts.

Black makes no mention of a judgment in Delaware last year in which Judge Leo Strine found he 'had persistently and seriously' breached his fiduciary responsibilities to Hollinger International before ordering him to repay $8.7m (£4.6m).

The 'salacious headlines' he complains about were mainly generated by the findings of an independent panel of Hollinger International directors that concluded Black was guilty of 'corporate kleptocracy' by ransacking the company of more than $400m in the form of improper payments, management fees and expenses for him and his wife Barbara Amiel Black.

Canadian authorities recently thwarted his bid to take private subsidiary Hollinger Inc - the keystone-to the old empire - while he and his cronies face a $500m action for 'acting in bad faith to benefit themselves to the detriment of Hollinger'.