After weeks of argument over filings, the Conrad Black trial turns juicy with revelations about the spending habits of the former media mogul and his wife Barbara Amiel Black.
Take for example the disclosures of his spouse needing five separate closets for her evening gowns, $500 shoes and $7000 handbags. Not to mention the diamond ring and brooch worth millions of dollars, purchased just days after those contentious non-compete payments. Or the way Black billed Hollinger $1.4 million to pay the staff of his four homes, including an 11- bedroom townhouse in London, a Toronto mansion, an ocean-front estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and the Manhattan apartments. The staff included chefs, butlers, maids, chauffeurs and security guards. Indeed, the Blacks' chauffeur in New York had a corporate American Express card. And who can blame them? Good help is hard to find.
Then the court was also told how Black dismissed investor unrest as an "epidemic of shareholder idiocy".
Black has declared that he will win this case hands-down. But this is the sort of stuff the jury will remember.
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