Conrad Black, seen in December 2007, will be resentenced on two convictions upheld by a U.S. appeals court. The court also overturned two fraud convictions. (John Gress/Reuters)

Conrad Black won a partial victory Friday after a U.S. appeals court overturned two of his fraud convictions.

But the 7th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago also upheld one of the former media baron's fraud convictions and an obstruction of justice conviction.

The U.S. Attorney's office said it needs time to decide whether it will retry Black on the convictions that were overturned Friday because of a legal technicality.

"We are pleased that the Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions on fraud and obstruction counts and we will make our further intentions known to the District Court at the appropriate time after we have studied the opinion carefully," the office said in a statement.

A statement from Black's office said: "Given the attitude of the appeal court panel asked by the U.S. Supreme Court to review its own errors, today's decision was all that could have been expected and is a gratifying elimination of the main remaining charges.

"All of the defendants are innocent of all allegations, civil and criminal, and are reviewing the next steps in this very long and exacting process of achieving complete vindication. Very little now remains of the Hollinger International special committee's original fantastic accusations that gave rise to the charges of corporate misconduct."

The Montreal-born Black, who is free on bail, will be resentenced on the convictions that were upheld. They are related to a 2007 case in which he and colleagues were convicted of defrauding investors of Hollinger International.

Prosecutors could also retry Black on the two convictions that were overturned.

The appeals court affirmed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that the so-called "honest services" laws used to help convict Black did not apply in his case.

But it said the conviction relating to the appropriation of money to which Hollinger was legally entitled would still apply.

"The evidence of pecuniary fraud is so compelling that no reasonable jury could have refused to convict the defendants of it," Judge Richard Posner wrote for the three-panel court.

'Nonexistent crime'

Black's lawyers had argued that the "'taint" of the three fraud convictions prompted the jury to convict Black of obstructing justice in connection with his removal of boxes of documents from his Toronto office.

The defence had argued that since there was no fraud, there could not be any obstruction.

But the appeals court said that at the time Black removed those boxes, the "honest-services fraud was a nonexistent crime."

"Hundreds of persons must have been convicted of it before the Supreme Court, years after Black's act, narrowed it to cases in which the defendant receives a bribe or a kickback," the court wrote.

A judge released the 66-year-old Black from a Florida prison two months ago to await the appeal court decision.

Although the defendants are entitled to a new trial on the overturned counts, "the entitlement is moot unless the government decides to retry them," Posner wrote in the judgment.

"The government may wish instead, in order to conserve its resources and wind up the protracted litigation, to dismiss the [overturned count] and proceed directly to resentencing."

With files from The Canadian Press