The tycoon in the dock: Read all about it... The trial of Conrad Black

As a keen student of military tactics, Lord Black of Crossharbour knows the importance of preparation and patience before going into a great battle. This weekend, there is time for a little late pepping of his legal forces, a last-minute rearrangement of the arguments marshalled in his defence. But there is not long to wait. The first cannon-fire is due.

The former proprietor of The Daily Telegraph, driven from the helm of his newspaper empire four years ago, finally gets his day in court next week. The three-month trial in Chicago, beginning with jury selection on Wednesday, could clear his name, restore his access to the elite world of wealth and power, and provide a barrel-load of ammunition to pursue libel suits against each and every journalist who has damned him as a "corporate kleptocrat"; Or he might go to jail for 101 years.

In what looks set to be the media trial of the decade, he faces 14 counts of fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice, accused of looting more than $80m (£41m) from Hollinger International, the stock market-listed part of a media business that was once the third-largest in the English-speaking world.

Also charged in the case are John Boultbee, Hollinger's former chief financial officer, former executive vice-president Peter Atkinson and former general counsel Mark Kipnis. The co-defendants all pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud, mail fraud and tax fraud.

Rather than running the company properly for the benefit of all its shareholders, Lord Black used Hollinger as a personal piggy bank, prosecutors allege, diverting millions out of the company in bogus "non-compete" deals and other fees. The court will also hear juicy details of a lavish lifestyle that included holidays to Bora Bora on the company jet, a $54,000 birthday party for Lord Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, at an exclusive New York restaurant, and much more.

The tycoon will have a forum to argue that he is the victim of a vendetta by prosecutors and a crazed "corporate governance" agenda on Wall Street.

Lord Black has hit the public relations circuit these past two weeks, making scathing denunciations of his enemies, the "pygmies" of Wall Street, the US prosecutors he says are guilty of a "putsch", the "braying, hideous, tricoteuses" of the British press. His capacity for righteous indignation has never known any bounds, and he will not miss an opportunity to gild his insults with a few long words or a classical reference. To affect humility now would beggar belief.

The son of an embittered Toronto businessman whose ousting from the family business he vowed to avenge, Lord Black was an aggressive operator who quickly found the role of media baron suited his desire for an entrée to high society on both sides of the Atlantic. In its pomp, Hollinger was stretched from local papers in Canada to take in the UK Telegraph titles, the Chicago Sun-Times and The Jerusalem Post. His 15-year marriage to the beautiful and ambitious journalist Ms Amiel was his second, her fourth.

BARBARA AMIEL: The Leading Lady

Among the dramatis personae of the Conrad Black story, Barbara Amiel is cast as Lady Macbeth - wielding a Hermes handbag. According to the favoured interpretation, she is the high maintenance second wife whose aspirations to status and wealth, whose social climbing, and whose taste for luxuries, bewitched Black into an expensive world that he could only finance by treating his media companies as a piggy bank.

That was how former Telegraph executives saw it, anyhow. Jeremy Deedes, the former chief executive, says he used to call Ms Amiel "the distraction", adding: "Barbara is a five-star girl and she needs five-star maintenance. He was willing to do whatever she wanted, it would appear."

Born in the East End of London in 1940 and moving to Canada when she was eight, Amiel rose to prominence in Canadian and then British journalism, becoming a right-wing columnist with Zionist views, and she still writes for the Canadian magazine Macleans magazine - where, pointedly, she recently lashed out at publicity-seeking federal prosecutors in the US. "American justice? It's only a TV show," she wrote. How often will she appear in court? (Often, but not necessarily every day, says Lord Black.) Will she testify in her husband's defence? Most importantly, what will she wear? When she threw open her wardrobe doors to Vogue in 2002, declaring "my extravagance knows no bounds", she revealed more than a dozen Hermes bags. Chances are she is putting some thought to which one to accessorise.

PATRICK FITZGERALD: The Prosecutor

Patrick Fitzgerald spent 14 years without ever connecting the gas at his New York apartment. He was never there. He was practically living at work, where a change of clothes was always hanging on the office door and socks spilled out of the drawers. To call him a driven man would be to under-sell this 6ft 2in former rugby player. Little wonder the 46-year-old attorney is one of America's fastest-rising public prosecutors, with a public profile that is increasing to match.

He returned to Chicago last week for a final glance over preparations for the trial fresh from securing the conviction in Washington of Scooter Libby. The aide to Dick Cheney was found guilty this week of perjury after Mr Fitzgerald's dogged - many said "over-zealous" - three-year investigation into journalists' sources and leaks from the White House.

The son of Irish immigrants to the US, where his father worked as a Manhattan doorman, Fitzgerald made his name chasing down mobsters and terrorists in New York City.

EDWARD GREENSPAN: The Defender

Mr Greenspan is the lawyer who gets the call when Canada's rich and famous get into trouble. Probably the country's most famous criminal defence attorney, he has been able to turn even the most unpromising cases into miracle escapes.

The moment Lord Black was forced out of his companies in 2003 he picked up the phone to his old friend. Mr Greenspan was first hired by the tycoon in 1982 when he was being investigated over misleading statements made during a takeover battle for a mining company.

Mr Greenspan's friendship with Barbara Amiel, dates from the 1970s in Toronto. Greenspan's courtroom manner - plain-speaking, droll, with a touch of the shambles - is no affectation. He is the same in conversations with journalists, and he courts them assiduously, playing the public relations game for his clients even as he plays down its importance.

HENRY KISSINGER: The Star Witness

Henry Kissinger is famously clever. Conrad Black is famously keen on showing how clever he is. The two struck up a friendship that gave Lord Black an entrée into polite political circles in the US, and eventually saw Kissinger join Hollinger's board. His addition provided a dash of celebrity and a touch of intellectual gravitas - but did not necessarily provide the independent scrutiny that may have prevented Lord Black from finding himself in the dock. The 12 jurors will be debating how much Kissinger knew about all the deals, the lavish expenses and claims the Blacks' were transferring money from company coffers into their own pockets. An appearance on the witness stand could not fail to dent Kissinger's reputation.

DAVID RADLER: The Whistleblower

When a casually dressed David Radler stood in a Chicago courtroom in 2005 to plead guilty to a charge of mail fraud, he was serving up one of the corporate world's great acts of betrayal.

For 36 years, he had been Lord Black's right-hand man, the parsimonious numbers guy whose slash-and-burn approach to newspaper management turned him into a hate figure for journalists across Canada, the US and the UK. And then, with prosecutors closing in, he struck a plea bargain. Facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a US penitentiary, he agreed to a 29-month term to be served in Canada - in return for taking the stand against his former partner.

Lord Black was charged within weeks. When the two men meet, expect the atmosphere to be poisonous. Lord Black tells friends that he is eagerly anticipating a three-day cross-examination of Radler, "after which there will be nothing left of him".

RICHARD PERLE: The Friend In High Places

Mr Perle, a stalwart of American neoconservatism for two decades and one of the biggest cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, was right at the heart of the conflicts of interest and personal enrichment that characterised Conrad Black's Hollinger empire in its pomp.

He met Lord Black in 1981, shortly after being appointed Ronald Reagan's assistant defence secretary, and became more and more enmeshed in the tycoon's network of business and social contacts.

Eventually he became the only outside director on Hollinger's powerful three-man executive committee. Mr Perle was said to have been paid $5.4m in fees for various Hollinger posts over a period of five years.

MARIE-JOSEE KRAVIS: The Society Wife

This is exactly the sort of woman Barbara Amiel aspired to be. The Montreal-born economist has a significant independent career on the conservative right, and a powerful businessman husband who made her a pivotal figure among New York high society. She has style, she has connections, and she has money - more than the Blacks would ever make.

Henry Kravis was the private equity king whose audacious takeover bid for the conglomerate RJR Nabisco marked the high water mark of Eighties capitalism and inspired the book and film Barbarians at the Gate. His wife was an old acquaintance of Conrad Black's from Toronto. In New York, the couple offered the Blacks an entrée to the world of unthinkably rich, of which they made assiduous use. Many people around the couple believe that Barbara Amiel's friendship with Marie-Josee was flecked with envy, that "keeping up with the Kravises" became a consuming motive for her lavish spending on private jets, far-flung holidays and outlandish parties.

When, in 1996, Marie-Josee took a seat on the Hollinger board, joining the powerful audit committee, attendees recalled that meetings would have the feel of a society lunch club, where she and Amiel would discuss the next big social engagements. As she takes the stand, prosecutors will of course be pressing Marie-Josee on what, if anything, was discussed about the Blacks' extraordinary compensation at Hollinger - but they are unlikely to pass up the chance to ask scurrilous questions about the Blacks' social whirl, too.

AMY ST EVE: The Judge

Amy St Eve, still only 41, was one of the youngest judges on the federal bench when she was appointed five years ago. She is already whispered as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court one day. For now, in downtown Chicago, she runs her courtroom "like a drill sergeant", happy to cut off attorneys in mid-flow and brooking no insubordination.

The Black trial will be pushed along at a fast clip, no doubt, and she has already several times told attorneys on both sides to tone down their histrionic objections and interventions.

The main concern for the Black legal team: hints, here and there, that Judge St Eve takes a tough line against defence attorneys in particular. She never wanted to be a defence lawyer, her dentist father told reporters, "because you have to lie too much".

The judge is married and has three children.

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