Mr. and Mrs. Black Go On a Shopping Spree (Or Two)

As Conrad Black's trial stretches through another week, the men and women of the jury are finally getting a little entertainment.

While vagaries of S.E.C. regulations may require some mental acrobatics on the part of jurors, here's a fact that is likely to stick in their minds: the $42,000 Black billed to Hollinger for his wife's surprise birthday party.

That's one of the many gory details in Conrad Black's personal ledger that have come to light as prosecutors attempt to use Black's almost grotesque spending habits to pit the jury against him.

Conrad Black, the former chairman of newspaper publisher Hollinger, is being charged along with three co-defendants with stealing $60 million from Hollinger from 1997 to 2003, mostly in the form of personal expenses billed to the company.

And we're not talking about a superfluous town car ride or the questionable dinner expensed now and again. On Thursday, Bloomberg News dished up some examples of Mr. and Mrs. Black's spending exploits that have been paraded out in court so far.

Probably the juiciest story concerns their swanky Park Avenue residences - one for themselves, one for their servants. Testimony reveals that the Blacks lived in a 4,500 square foot apartment rent-free until deciding to buy it from Hollinger in 2000. But Black insisted the apartment be valued at $3 million for the sale, the price the company had paid six years earlier. Some says that's around $2.5 million below market value.

Amongst the assets Black cobbled together to meet his self-determined $3 million price tag was a smaller apartment that Black had bought for $499,000 in 1998. After turning it over to Hollinger as part of the sale, the Blacks then charged the company more than $1.5 million to renovate it, only to turn it into housing for their servants.

Of course, this was only one of four residences maintained by the Blacks. Prosecutors say Hollinger was billed $1.4 million from 1997 to 2003 to pay the staff of the four homes, including an 11-bedroom townhouse in London, a Toronto mansion on 12 acres, an ocean-front estate in Palm Beach, and of course, the Park Avenue pied-a-terre.

And if Conrad comes off as a bit of a spending addict, his wife Barbara Amiel Black gives Conrad a run for his money. Mrs. Black reportedly had five separate closets for her evening gowns, over 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnick shoes, and more than a dozen of Hermes' famous Birkin bags (starting price: $7,000).

In one instance, Black's wife reportedly charged the company $2,057 for a T. Anthony Limited leather briefcase, which prosecutors say her husband approved as a business expense.

by Liz Gunnison