Can Conrad Black afford to sue nemesis Tom Bower?

Conrad Black, the media tycoon jailed in 2008 for fraud and obstruction of justice, was today granted bail pending an appeal and should be free to leave the Coleman correctional facility in Florida before the end of the week.

But Judge Amy St Eve insisted he must appear before her in Chicago and that, until she is clear about his finances, he may not leave the United States and return to his home in Canada.

The bail was granted on a $2m bond put up by a friend of Black's, the conservative American philanthropist Roger Hertog.

Two factors delayed Black's immediate release from prison: a lack of formal identification and money. Although he is one of Canada's most prominent men, and a member of Britain's House of Lords, he has no identification, all his paperwork - including his all-important British passport - having expired while he was in jail.

There is also the matter of where he will live. His only remaining property is his heavily mortgaged mansion, once owned by his father, in the Bridle Path neighbourhood of Toronto. As The First Post reported earlier this week, the deeds to his house in Palm Beach, where his wife Barbara Amiel has stayed during his 28 months in prison, have been transferred to an investment firm in settlement of an $11.6m loan.

Black's lawyer, Miguel Estrada, told Judge St Eve today that his client would probably live in a hotel if he is not allowed to leave the States.

A shortage of cash is the big shadow on Black's horizon. According to the Globe and Mail, Black's legal costs in his long and ultimately fruitless battle to stay of jail were paid for by Hollinger's 'directors and officers' insurance policy. A source said the policy had covered more than $40m in legal fees from 2003 to 2008, when the former Daily Telegraph proprietor was finally incarcerated.

But when Hollinger filed for bankruptcy protection last year, that insurance policy was terminated. Any legal costs must now be picked up by Black himself - and there are a lot of them, not least the estimated $1m it cost him to mount his recent appeal to the US Supreme Court.

At least that appeal appears to be have been money will spent, in that it was the Supreme Court's ruling on a point of law that led directly to today's bail hearing.

But there are other potentially huge legal costs looming. According to the Globe and Mail, Black still has to defend himself against charges filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a case which has been delayed pending the outcome of the criminal case. Defending such a case could cost him many millions.

He also faces allegations from the US Internal Revenue Service that he owes $70 million in unpaid taxes and penalties.

"Maybe now we will finally be able to see how wealthy he really is," said Eugene Fox, of Cardinal Capital, a US company that lost money through investing in Hollinger.

With these major legal hurdles to negotiate, it is likely to be some time - if ever - before Black goes to court (of his own volition) to carry out his promise to sue the British writer Tom Bower (previous page, top right) for libel.

Bower is the author of Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, "a modern-day classic of hubris" which infuriated Black with its portrait of "a clever and bullying man from a privileged background whose greatest talent was denying the truth", and a big-spending second wife - Barbara Amiel - whose breasts were described by a previous lover as "an act of God".

Black wrote in an article for Tatler, on the eve of his trial, that Bower's book "plumbs profound depths of libel and prosaic clumsiness". ·