Disgraced media mogul Conrad Black has begun a six-and-a-half-year jail sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.
Black (63) arrived at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in central Florida around noon today.
Black and other former Hollinger International executives were accused of swindling the company out of $6.1 million by giving themselves illegal bonuses.
Canadian-born Black was convicted in July on charges of obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of the company, once the world's third-largest publisher of English-language newspapers.
He had been free on bond until today but was confined to the area around his Palm Beach, Florida, estate or near Chicago, where he was convicted and where Hollinger was once based.
Black, who once owned London's Daily Telegraphand newspapers from the Jerusalem Postto Canada's National Post, relinquished his Canadian citizenship to become a member of Britain's House of Lords.
If his conviction stands, he is likely to be deported after serving his US sentence. Internal auditors once accused Black of operating the newspaper chain as a "corporate kleptocracy."
The shrunken company is now called the Sun-Times Media Group and has put itself up for sale.
Black has said he is innocent and remains confident that at least part of his conviction will be overturned on appeal, which would sharply reduce his sentence.
"My book about this outrage is almost ready, so if I must go, I will not be going quietly," he said in an e-mail to www.Independent.ie, operated by Ireland's Independent Newspapers.
"It's like back to boarding school, without, one dares to assume, the tedium and indignity of corporal punishment." He did not stop to speak to journalists as he arrived at the prison.