Conrad Black this morning offered the merest hint of humility as he admitted making mistakes in the scandal that led to his conviction for embezzlement.

The former newspaper proprietor said that he underestimated the strength of "corporate governance movement".

Lord Black of Crossharbour also suggested that he would return to work in finance, explaining that it was "not a difficult area to make money in".

The former Daily Telegraph owner faces a 35-year jail sentence after being found guilty of obstructing justice and plundering $6.1 million from the accounts of Hollinger International, the public company of which he was chief executive, in order to fund an extravagant life style of private jets and $60,000 parties.

In his first full media interview since the verdict, Black told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, without any apparent sense of irony: "I would have done some things differently. I'm not going to turn this into a confessional, but I clearly misjudged the strength of the corporate governance movement. I didn't misjudge their virtue or lack of it."

Lord Black insisted on his innocence and said that he hopes to be acquitted on the remaining charges. Black had originally been charged with defrauding Hollinger shareholders of more than $30 million.

He said that he would return to work, but not in newspapers. "I only have the background in two areas. Publishing and finance. I think I could return to finance. I mean, this is not a difficult area to make money in."

He attacked the British media's coverage of the case for a "false bourgeois piety and priggishness that assumes whatever an American prosecutor says is true".

He said: "At least in the United States people know how their system operates and there's a degree of cynicism about this kind of thing. This theory that it's a great rise and fall story, or some sort of Shakespearean or Greek tragedy and that I was misled by my wife and lived to extravagance: it's all nonsense".

Black also offered an explanation of why he did not take the stand as a witness in his own defence. He said: "It was not conceivable to any of the defendants or their counsel that we had not established well beyond reasonable doubt what we needed to achieve acquittals on every count." He added that it also would have prolonged the case.

Black will be sentenced on December 10, and faced a maxium sentence of 35 years, although prosecutors were pushing for 24 to 30 years. But a confidential pre-sentencing report seen by the The Times, suggested he could be given a sentence of just five years.

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