CHICAGO — On the face of it, Conrad Black's fraud trial has had all the spice and saucy detail a jury could hope for from a celebrity court affair: betrayal, alleged abuse of luxurious perks, sneaky backroom money moves, vicious outbursts.

But by the time lawyers present closing arguments this week, the men and women who will determine the fate of the former media mogul will have spent most of their time being dragged through a dry, complex paper trail of non-compete payments.

The closing arguments will bring to an end a 13-week trial that has taken jurors through a number of complex deals and introduced them to the lavish lifestyle of a Canadian-born British Lord.

Central to the drama is a broken 30-year partnership that culminated in Black's longtime friend, David Radler, testifying as the prosecution's star witness.

On Monday, prosecutors will have a chance to line up their best evidence and weave together a story that must convince the Chicago jury beyond any reasonable doubt that Black, and former Hollinger International executives Peter Atkinson, Mark Kipnis and Jack Boultbee, deserve to go to jail for the rest of their lives.

The defence must show the U.S. government's case is shaky and full of holes.

It will likely focus on Radler's lack of credibility and the lack of any corroborating evidence for his claims that Black was behind a scheme to divert millions of dollars from Hollinger International shareholders by pocketing a part of fees paid to the company during its sale of newspaper assets.

"Their theme is going to be that the prosecution's case is based entirely on the word of a liar,'' said Hugh Totten, a lawyer with Chicago firm Perkins Coie.

Radler faced a ferocious cross-examination at the hands of all four defence lawyers, who accused him of lying on the stand to please prosecutors and secure his lenient plea agreement.

Totten said the defence will also focus on the fact that Black isn't on trial for one of the disputed deals _ the sale of newspapers to CanWest Global Communications in 2000.

That will allow them to emphasize that non-compete payments are common in the newspaper business, and to highlight that the one deal in which Black had a direct hand wasn't fraudulent.

"They'll say Radler did the others, he lied then and he is the one that's lying to you now,'' Totten said.

The defence is also expected to highlight the disclosures that were made to Hollinger's audit committee _ a three-member group who proved disappointing for the government when Richard Burt, Marie-Josee Kravis and James Thompson all testified they hadn't read the documents they signed approving the non-competes.

Prosecutors say Black, Boultbee and Atkinson inserted themselves into a number of sales agreements to disguise tax-free bonuses as non-compete payments and accuse internal lawyer Kipnis of helping to facilitate the alleged fraud.

They will likely bring up testimony from several chief executives who purchased newspapers from Hollinger but did not request non-competes. They will also try to break down defence claims that Radler was behind any wrongdoing and that Black, who operated in a separate sphere, was unaware of his dealings.

They'll say "you just can't have these kinds of transactions involving millions and millions of dollars and not know about it -- it just defies logic,'' said Steven Skurka, a Canadian criminal lawyer following the trial.

Skurka also has a blog about the trial on which he has predicted all the defendants will be acquitted.

The burden of proof lies with prosecutors in criminal cases, and while the opening arguments are said to favour the government, the real pressure at the end of the case will be on prosecutor Julie Ruder.

"In the opening arguments, the jury is unaware really about what's going to happen,'' said James Morton, a Toronto litigator and president of the Ontario Bar Association. "It's easy to capture them with a story.

"By the end of the trial they've seen everything, they heard the evidence, and if the prosecution didn't live up to what they said they were going to in the opening _ and I'm not sure they did here _ then they're going to be more skeptical about the prosecution and more inclined to listen to the defence.''

The four men are facing charges of mail and wire fraud, racketeering and tax evasion, while Black also faces a charge of obstruction of justice.

He is also is accused of defrauding Hollinger through his purchase from the company of a ritzy apartment in New York, billing the company for two-thirds of a US$62,000 birthday party for his wife at posh restaurant La Grenouille and taking the company plane on a two-week vacation to the island of Bora Bora.

A separate money laundering charge against Black was recently dropped, and Judge Amy St. Eve also dismissed one count against Boultbee on Wednesday, which had to do with him helping Black arrange the trip to Bora Bora.

Closing arguments will begin Monday and could go into next week, at which point the judge will instruct the jury before they head out to deliberate on the verdict.