Canada says Conrad Black can return home after release

Former Daily Telegraph owner Conrad Black, jailed in the US for fraud and obstructing justice, has been given permission to live in Canada, where he was born, when he is freed from a Florida jail on Friday.

He was granted a one-year temporary residence permit despite having given up his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to accept a peerage in the House of Lords.

Black, 67, has made no secret of his hope to become a Canadian citizen again and live in Toronto with wife Barbara Amiel. He once owned many of the country’s leading newspapers.

Opposition leader Tom Mulcair told the Canadian parliament the permit should not have been issued to this “British criminal”. But a Conservative senator promised Black’s “many friends” would welcome him back.

Black got six and a half years in 2007 for defrauding shareholders in media holding company Hollinger of £3.8 million but launched several appeals, including one that resulted in the Supreme Court ruling an anti-corruption law was unconstitutional, and a reduction in his sentence.