Is Conrad Black heading for the criminal courts? Speculation that the
disgraced media owner will be charged with fraud has reached “a fever
pitch” after his long-time right-hand man David Radler was charged last
week with fraudulently diverting $US32 million from Black’s Chicago
publisher Hollinger International, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail.

In the wake of a “stunning corporate meltdown,” Radler has agreed to
plead guilty and cooperate in a continuing investigation into financial
scandal at Hollinger – “presumably in return for a more lenient
sentence than the maximum of 35 years he could face,” reports the New York Times. Most legal observers saw no comfort for Lord Black in the fact that he
was not among those charged last week, says David Usborne in The Independent. In corporate cases like this, it’s common for prosecutors to “trawl executives slightly lower down the chain
of command in hope of using them to net the biggest fish.”

And to add to Black’s humiliation, the BBC is planning to produce Shades of Black: the Conrad Black Story, a TV drama about the disgraced tycoon’s life. Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, have been cast as social pariahs, says The Guardian.