Former media baron Conrad Black remains confident he will come out the winner in "this assault" launched against him by the U.S. government, despite being convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice.

A Chicago jury found the Montreal-born Black guilty on Friday of three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice, for which he could face a maximum of 35 years in prison. He was acquitted on nine other counts.

Black, who has maintained he did nothing wrong while at the helm of Hollinger International, will be in court Thursday for a decision on whether he will be released on bond or taken into custody as he awaits sentencing in November.

"My views are clear," Black said, in a Monday e-mail to CBC News. "We got rid of nine of the 13 counts, [12 of the 16 they started with when they threw all the spaghetti at the wall], including all the bunk about looting, racketeering and personal extravagance." 

"The former '$500 million kleptocracy' is down to $2.9 million in transactions that were approved and disclosed," he wrote.

Black concluded the e-mail by saying:

"We go on to a higher court where I expect to get rid of what's left of this assault from the U.S. government, which with the assistance of its Canadian helpers, will soon enter its fifth year. I still expect to win. Regards, CONRAD."

'You fight till you win'

In an e-mail he wrote to the Globe and Mail during the more than two weeks the jury spent deliberating, he said he felt like "a soldier conscripted in a foreign war."

"You fight till you win, then you come home."

Co-defendants Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee, former Hollinger International executives, and Mark Kipnis, corporate counsel in Hollinger International's Chicago headquarters, were found guilty of three counts of mail fraud each. Neither Black nor his co-defendants testified during the 15-week trial.

Hollinger International began selling its extensive newspaper assets in the late 1990s in a series of transactions.

U.S. prosecutors — backed by star prosecution witness and former Black chief lieutenant David Radler — alleged Black devised a scheme to improperly divert $60 million US from those sales to himself, and to Radler, Boultbee, Atkinson or companies in which they had an interest. Kipnis, the prosecution alleged, facilitated the diversions.

Government alleges non-compete deals frauds

The prosecution said the money should have gone to Hollinger International and its shareholders but instead was dressed up as non-compete payments — money the buyer of a business pays a seller in return for promising not to start up a competing business.

The government alleged the non-compete deals in this case were frauds — cover stories invented to allow Black and the co-defendants to transfer tax-free money into their pockets. The fraud allegations around the sale of these newspapers were the heart of the prosecution's case.

The defence argued non-compete agreements are routine in the newspaper business. In all these transactions, it said, the payments arising out of them were legal, appropriate, disclosed to Hollinger International auditors and authorized by the board.