Conrad Black at home in Toronto
Posted May 4, 2012 12:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A hearty smooch from wife Barbara Amiel welcomed Conrad Black home Friday just hours after the disgraced media baron was released from a prison in Florida.
The couple were spotted roaming the grounds of Black’s sprawling estate in Toronto with a rambunctious white dog at their feet.
At one point, they paused briefly for a kiss amid the flowering trees on the property.
The sighting came just hours after a three-vehicle caravan that was believed to be carrying Black roared through the front gate of the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami on Friday at 8:15 a.m.
“Earlier today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations effected the return of Mr. Conrad Black to Canada in accordance with the final order of removal,” officials said in a statement.
Despite the fact Black, convicted in 2007 on fraud and obstruction of justice charges for his business dealings at the helm of newspaper giant Hollinger Inc., renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to accept a British peerage, the federal government granted his application for a one-year temporary resident permit.
Black’s home since September had been a nondescript, low-lying, concrete fortress about a half-hour drive from downtown that features outdoor amenities like basketball courts and a baseball diamond.
Only the imposing barriers and Department of Justice signs at the gate, which is at the end of the long suburban boulevard lined with towering palm trees, betray the facility as a correctional institution.
News of his return to the country he’d forsaken more than a decade ago divided Canadians of all political stripes.
