Black, 62, is charged along with Jack Boultbee, 63, of Vancouver, Hollinger’s former chief financial officer; Peter Y. Atkinson, 59, of Toronto, the company’s former general counsel; and Mark Kipnis, 60, an attorney who served as corporate secretary in the Chicago headquarters.

The men are accused of siphoning $60 million out of Hollinger through asset sales in which all but Kipnis pocketed millions of dollars in payments from buyers.Black by himself is alleged to be responsible for $84 million that the company lost through the payments, which Cramer told jurors eventually turned into “a bold money grab” by the executives.

Black is charged with racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering and mail, wire and tax fraud. If convicted, he may spend the rest of his life in prison. Hollinger, which once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, London’s Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post, changed its name to Sun-Times Media Group Inc. last year.

Genson told jurors how Black and David Radler, Hollinger’s former president and chief operating officer, built the company that grew into Hollinger International from a single newspaper in southeastern Quebec they purchased in 1969. By 1998, Hollinger was the third-largest newspaper company in the world, “with revenues of over $2 billion,” Genson said.

While the attorney said his client had amassed a great amount of money, he told jurors they “can’t allow the sparkle of wealth to distract you from the facts of the case.”

Then Sunday night, a second $63.4-million settlement was announced with Sun-Times Media, the new incarnation of Hollinger International, that settled claims against Radler related to backdated stock options when he was chief operating officer at the company.

Radler has already pleaded guilty to fraud and has agreed to testify against Black in the criminal case in return for a lenient jail sentence of 29 months and a $250,000 fine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Cramer was expected to lay out the government’s case Tuesday.

Prosecutors allege Black defrauded shareholders and used money from the Hollinger International newspaper group to cover extravagant personal expenses. The charges centre on the sale of hundreds of community papers and $85 million in “non-compete” payments allegedly pocketed by executives of Black’s former newspaper empire

Black is charged with wire and mail fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering and obstruction of justice.