Perhaps you're the type of person who reads those stories about the huge paydays famous people pull down. Or how much they're worth. Or what they like to do with their money.

Perhaps you just "Google" the objects of your envy/fascination/loathing to find out what others have been writing about them.

Well then, you'll be glad to know there's a new source of personal financial info to flesh out critical details in the life of one particular member of the rich and famous club who's very much in the news these days — Conrad Black.

This is isn't any ordinary gossip. This stuff is evidence — exhibits introduced by the U.S. government at the trial of Black and three former associates. And it's all online, courtesy of the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

The prosecution has been posting many previously unseen documents on its website within a day or two of them being introduced in court. You can see them all here. Note: They're all PDF files.

Together, the private e-mails, cashed cheques, and details of big-money deals provide a fascinating glimpse of the inner goings-on at the time Hollinger International — the media empire Black used to head — was busy selling off its newspaper assets.

Exotic trip cited

First, the infamous Bora Bora trip. This was a vacation Black and his wife took to the South Pacific Island in 2001. They used the company jet for the trip. The prosecution has called that a blatant example of the abuse of corporate perks, not a legitimate business expense, as the defence has suggested.

Here's the flight log for that trip, showing how the jet made its way from Toronto to Bora Bora — but not before stopping at Teterboro, N.J., Seattle, Honolulu and Tahiti.

An attached breakdown of costs from Hollinger's former comptroller showed the plane cost more than $24,000 per flying hour to operate in 2001 — meaning the Bora Bora trip's 23.1 billable hours (representing the Seattle to Bora Bora and return flights) resulted in a trip cost of $565,326 US. (Note: The defence disputes this accounting and puts the actual figure much lower.)

Now, the question of who should pay for the Bora Bora trip. In January 2002, former Hollinger comptroller Fred Creasey sent a memo to Black asking how those flights should be charged. Black sent a handwritten note back, in which he said the flights "were mainly within the United States," so Black proposed to charge them to Hollinger International, based on company guidelines. "I'm happy to pay, as to half, personally," he scrawled, if that caused any difficulties.

Later that year, Black sent an e-mail to former Hollinger exec Peter Atkinson in which he noted "there is some move afoot" to charge Black for the full cost of his trip to Bora Bora. "Needless to say, no such outcome is acceptable," he wrote.

That Bora Bora trip, by the way, turned out to be a nightmare for Black long before the U.S. Justice Department took an interest in who paid for it. In an e-mail Black sent to the editor of the New York Sun newspaper just a day after returning, he called it a "shambles of a trip." The island was in the midst of a dengue fever epidemic, he wrote. He got bronchitis, and said he and his wife felt like "geriatric freaks among a sea of honeymooners."

Black evidently had no time to do any shopping in Bora Bora either. The customs declaration form he filled out on the way back said he had nothing to declare. You'll notice that when asked to choose between describing his Bora Bora trip as "business" or "personal," he ticked off "personal."

E-mails give lowdown on CanWest-Hollinger talks

Of course, there's plenty about the corporate deals, too.

Back in 2000, CanWest Global was in talks to buy 11 of Hollinger International's daily newspapers in Canada, as well as 146 community papers and a 50 per cent share in the National Post newspaper. This was a multibillion-dollar deal.

The e-mails back and forth between Hollinger's then CEO Conrad Black and CanWest's then CEO Izzy Asper show how it evolved.

Here's a June 14 e-mail from Asper to Black in which he spelled out his understanding of the sale in a 45-page "transaction proposal."

Here's Black's "Dear Izzy" response the next day, in which he notes that Asper's proposal "is at considerable variance with what we agreed and could not be accepted."

But just 45 days later, the final transaction agreement emerged.

If you've been following the Black trial, you'll know that non-compete payments are at the heart of the prosecution's case. These are payments that went directly to Black and some former Hollinger executives when Hollinger International sold its Canadian and U.S. newspapers.

Non-compete payments are designed to compensate the seller in return for agreeing not to compete against the buyer in certain markets for a period of time following the sale. There's nothing terribly unusual about these payments. But in the case of Black and his co-accused, the prosecution says the payments should have gone to Hollinger International and all of its shareholders, not to Black et al.

To compete or non-compete

Dozens of the online exhibits relate to various non-compete agreements and payments.

A memo to Hollinger's audit committee in September 2000 showed how the $50 million in non-compete payments relating to the sale of newspapers to CanWest Global would be allocated — $19 million to Conrad Black, $19 million to expected prosecution witness David Radler (a longtime associate of Black's), $4 million each to Hollinger and Ravelston (a private company controlled by Black), and $2 million each to Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee (both former Hollinger execs who are facing fraud charges along with Black).

Incidentally, Black isn't charged with taking an illegal payment from the deal with CanWest because CanWest required Black to sign a non-compete agreement.

The minutes of Hollinger International's board meeting later that same month showed the payments were approved.

By 2003, some of the minority shareholders in Hollinger International — notably the private investment company Tweedy Browne — were complaining loudly about the millions in management fees and perks accruing to Black and other top executives.

So Black asked new board member Gordon Paris to "receive concerns from shareholders" and make recommendations. "I will take on the task of hosing down shareholders in need of it as a matter of some priority," Black wrote in an April 2003 e-mail to other Hollinger directors. "We don't want a large institutional shareholder like Tweedy Browne flapping about in such an agitated and indiscreet state," he added.

The special committee that Paris chaired ended up issuing a scathing indictment of the way Hollinger was run. Their report can't be entered as evidence, so you won't find it as a trial exhibit. But it's been posted here on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website.

And finally, if you're wondering why many of the media reports out of Chicago describe the jurors as bored, confused, even dozing off, this could be one of the reasons. It's the prosecution's flow chart showing the Hollinger empire's byzantine organizational structure as of 2003 and how Conrad Black fit into it all.

Many more exhibits will be posted in the weeks and months to come. Happy surfing.

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