Conrad Black settles realty suit

Former media baron Conrad Black settled a lawsuit brought against him by Sotheby’s International Realty Inc claiming that he failed to pay the commission on the $10.5 million sale of his New York apartment. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Sotheby’s alleged in a 2006 lawsuit that Black’s attorneys issued a check for the $557,000 commission on the Park Avenue apartment but stopped payment on it. The case was set for trial last month.

Black said in a statement on Tuesday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago improperly seized the proceeds from the sale, including funds for Sotheby’s commission. Black accused prosecutors of coordinating with the buyers to attend the October 2005 closing so they could issue seizure warrants to force him to forfeit $9 million in sale proceeds.

“Conrad was outraged by the conduct of the government and how they handled this,” Black’s attorney Marc Powers of Baker Hostetler said on Tuesday. The seizure occurred before Black was criminally charged with obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of Hollinger International, once the world’s third-largest publisher of English-language newspapers and now called the Sun-Times Media Group Inc.

A jury convicted Black on four of 13 charges but acquitted him on all counts related to the apartment sale, Powers said.