DETROIT -- Wayne County Circuit Judge Edward Ewell ruled Former Highland Park mayor and Detroit businessman Art Blackwell can travel to Canada.

Blackwell, 56, of Detroit, is facing embezzlement charges in a case where he is accused of taking an illegal salary while working as the financial manager for the city of Highland Park.

Last month, Wayne County Judge Roger LaRose denied Blackwell's request to allow him to travel to Canada to negotiate with the Royal Bank of Canada on a foreclosure of a condominium he said he has owned for the last five years.

Prosecutors convinced LaRose that Blackwell was a flight risk and a man with a gambling problem. They also said he has cash stashed in a safe deposit box in Canada.

Documents show Blackwell lost nearly $1 million at casinos in Detroit and Las Vegas in the past eight years.

During the same eight-year period Blackwell also won $8 million, which he claimed on his Internal Revenue Service documents.

In 2007 alone, he cleared more than $3 million in winnings from MGM Casino in Detroit. The year before that, he won $1.8 million at the slot machines at MGM in Detroit and a host of casinos in Las Vegas.

"I am a slot player. Everybody knows I don't play black jack or crapes. I like the slots," said Blackwell.

Blackwell said he doesn't call his excessive gambling a problem; he calls it a profit.

The documents will be used in his preliminary hearing on Nov. 17, where he said he will ask that the case be dismissed.

He also denies having a stash of cash in Canada.

Blackwell said the truth is that his money is tied up in bad real estate deals in Detroit and in Vegas.

"I own a building right now that two years ago they were offering over $2 million. Now I can't get $500,000," said Blackwell.

"My home in Las Vegas lost $600,000 my home in Windsor lost almost 800,000 in the past two years," said Blackwell.

Blackwell said he is trying to hold on to his investments for as long as he can until the housing market turns around. In the meantime, he said he just wants to go to Windsor to try and save his holdings, not to escape from the federal case against him.

"I am not going on a vacation. I am going to save assets," said Blackwell.

LaRose told Blackwell last week that he could hire an attorney to go to Canada for him.

Blackwell was appointed by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm in April 2005 to bring the city out of financial trouble. He promised to work for the cash-strapped city as a financial manager for $1 a year.

But according to papers filed in a taxpayer lawsuit, in 2008 Blackwell's contract was renegotiated for an $11,000-per-month salary.

The prosecutor's office's said the Michigan Department of Treasury conducted an audit and concluded that Blackwell was fully compensated for his services when he received $110,000 from April 2008 until his termination from the position in April 2009.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Blackwell also paid himself $264,000 more in checks written from city funding. At the time, Highland Park was facing a $16 million deficit.

Worthy said when Blackwell left office it was requested that he repay the city the $264,000, something he has not yet done.

"We would all like a job where we get paid our regular salaries and then we write checks to ourselves, checks equal to our salary. So in essence we doubled our money for the same amount of work," Worthy said. "This has nothing to do with how well or badly the job was done; it has to do with alleged embezzlement of money and resources from a very, very financially strapped city."