Fugitive Nadir flies back to UK after 17 years

TURKISH Cypriot businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain yesterday, 17 years after he fled while awaiting trial on theft charges stemming from the collapse of his Polly Peck business empire.
Nadir, who has been living in the north, which has no extradition treaty with Britain, arrived at Luton airport near London on a flight from Turkey with his 28-year-old wife Nujr. He was surrounded by photographers when he stepped off the plane, before leaving the airport in a grey Jaguar with blacked-out windows, and with a police escort.
Nadir, who says he is innocent, told reporters on the plane from Turkey that he hoped the climate in Britain was now right for him to get a fair trial.
“I’m delighted … that, after making such an effort all these years, the environment now is acceptable and it’s correct for me to go back and hopefully get a closure to this sad affair,” he told Sky News.
The 69-year-old tycoon Nadir must deposit £250,000 pounds with the court as a security, submit to electronic tagging and surrender his travel documents.
He told BBC radio yesterday he had fled 17 years ago because the legal battle over Polly Peck had endangered his life.
After years spent “battling with immense injustice and tremendous abuses of power in Britain … my health had deteriorated and at that point I felt that to save my life, I had to come to recuperate,” he said.
A major donor to the British Conservative Party, Nadir cast little light on why he has chosen to return now, except to say he was innocent and wanted to right the injustices he alleges he suffered in Britain.
His departure rocked the Conservative government of then Prime Minister John Major, leading to the resignation of a minister who had links to the businessman and questions over the conduct of the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
Last month, a London court agreed to grant Nadir bail providing he returned to Britain to face 66 theft charges relating to the Polly Peck fruit-to-electronics empire, which collapsed with debts of £1.3 billion.
Nadir must now appear at the Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing on September 3 although his trial is not expected to take place until 2012 because of the complexity of the allegations. “I’m hoping to get a fair trial, if this matter goes to trial, obviously,” he told the BBC. “But that was not the case in the past. I spent from 1990 to 1993 – almost December of 93 – battling with immense injustice and tremendous abuse of power in Britain.”
He said he had already “proved my innocence to the authorities without doubt but nobody took any notice at that time”. Nadir added there was “no deal” over his treatment once he returned to the UK. “I have not done a deal. My lawyers have asked for me to be granted bail before I came to England and that was decided. There is only one deal and that is, I am hoping I will see for the first time some justice.”
According to the BBC, in a legal twist, it emerged during a bail hearing in July this year that Nadir was never, legally speaking, on the run. In 1992 he had pleaded not guilty to the SFO’s allegations but was allowed to leave the court without a judge deciding whether he should be bailed or remanded. When Nadir fled in 1993, a judge issued an arrest warrant for breach of bail. However, the Old Bailey ruled that Nadir had not breached his bail because it had never been granted in the first place.
Nadir bought into Polly Peck in 1980, when it was an ailing textiles firm. It became a stock market darling during the 1980s, its share price rising more than 100 times, as Nadir built an empire including the Del Monte fruit business and Japan’s Sansui electronics firm.
But in 1990, administrators were called in, uncovering one of Britain’s most spectacular business failures.
Nadir was forced into personal bankruptcy in January 1992 by creditors owed more than £80 million.