Former media businessman Conrad Black was freed from jail in the US on $2million bail yesterday.
US District Judge Amy St Eve ruled the former proprietor of the Daily Telegraph must not leave the continental US and must attend a Chicago court to hear further conditions of his release.
Businessman and friend Roger Hertog posted the bail.
Black has been serving his sentence in a minimum security prison in Coleman, Florida.
The release came just two years and four months into a six-and-a-half-year sentence for defrauding investors out of millions of dollars.
The judge ordered Black to appear before her in Chicago at 12.30pm on Friday to explain the conditions of his release.
His lawyers asked that he be allowed to return to Canada, where he owns a home in Toronto.
But the judge said he must remain in the US and ordered that he must not try to obtain a passport.
His lawyer, Miguel Estrada, said his client did not have a passport but had been issued with an ID by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He said Black was likely to return to his home in Palm Beach, Florida, after his release from prison.
The decision to grant bail came after a US Supreme Court ruling weakened the “honest services” law which was central to the case brought by prosecutors.
It will now be left to a lower court to decide whether his conviction should be overturned.
The former head of the Hollinger International media empire was convicted with three other former executives of defrauding shareholders out of $6.1million.
He was also convicted of obstruction of justice after he was seen carrying boxes of documents out of his offices, loading them into his car and driving away. T
he documents were sought by US government investigators.
Hollinger International once owned the Daily Telegraph, Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post and hundreds of community papers in the US and Canada.
Black renounced his Canadian citizenship to become a member of the House of Lords and was known for a grand lifestyle.
