CHICAGO For all the sexy testimony about a Bora Bora vacation on the company's dime and a lavish Park Avenue apartment bought at a suspiciously low price, the center of the case against former media baron Conrad Black comes down to a decidedly unglamorous topic: Non-compete payments. Black has denounced the U.S. government's case as "pure fiction," a terse comment he made in French to Canadian reporters as he left U.S. District Court here Wednesday after the 3 1/2-month trial went to a jury.

More on the pending verdict from Editor&Publisher here.