JUST OVER 20 years ago, in August 1990, I broke the Asil Nadir Polly Peck story in a Sunday newspaper. I had discovered that there was a massive Inland Revenue inquiry into the personal tax affairs of the tycoon who was then ranked as the 36th richest man in Britain.
From his opulent base in one of London’s most exclusive squares, he controlled a conglomerate that included the Del Monte fruit packing business and sansui electronics, as well as a clothing business from which the company derived its name.
Dubbed the sultan of Berkeley square, he employed more than 40,000 people worldwide, had rich and powerful friends and had been a massive donor to the Tory party, giving more than £500,000 to the party.
Indeed, when things later started to turn sour for him, tory minister Michael Mates gave him a watch engraved with the legend ‘Don’t let the buggers get you down’. It is a relationship that cost Mates – who resigned following Nadir’s disgrace – his job in John Major’s government.
Nadir proved a tough target but he didn’t deny the story. Nor did he deny my further revelations that millions of pounds of Polly Peck money was used to prop up the company’s share price. Little wonder, then, that his business empire soon began to crumble.
A bankruptcy petition was lodged against him by his own shareholders and London’s Metropolitan Police Serious Fraud Office raided his offices. The company was bust by October 1990. Charges soon followed.
In his heyday, Nadir was the darling of the City – £1,000 invested in his company in 1980 was worth a staggering £1million within a decade. Polly Peck itself was worth more than £2billion at its peak, with a roster of blue chip shareholders such as former Marks & spencer chairman Lord Sieff, the Labour Party pension fund, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
It sounded too good to be true and indeed it was.
All of them, along with tens of thousands of pensioners and small shareholders lost all the money they had invested. the company was apparently built on sand, its profits seemingly exaggerated and turnover massaged. But the perceived success of the company bought great material wealth for Nadir and his family. He lived in a house in Belgravia, owned a stately home in Leicestershire, commuted by private jet, and boasted a string of racehorses.
And as he returns to these shores, he seems intent on picking up where he left off, proclaiming his innocence and flaunting his jetset lifestyle.
But why has he returned? Even with the generous bail terms he has been granted, Nadir is taking a big risk by standing trial.
Despite fleeing to Cyprus from Britain in disgrace, Nadir has flourished on the Mediterranean island where he was born in 1942.
He ran the Kibris Media Group, which owns newspapers, and radio and television stations on the island. And as a major employer, he is also something of a local folk hero – an image he uses his media outlets to reinforce.
He lived in a vast £3million mansion, watched over by CCTV cameras and filled with gaudy art – including the painting of a black panther which once hung over his London desk. He also had two talking parrots, Polly and Peck, and was driven to work with a gun-toting bodyguard.
The north of Cyprus, where he has been living his opulent lifestyle for the past 17 years, is notorious for playing host to a welter of UK fugitives because it doesn’t have an extradition treaty with this country. It really was a safe haven.
But times are changing and Nadir may have seen the writing on the wall. Just last month, for example, Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech in Ankara in which he urged all EU member states to embrace Turkey’s application for membership of the union, a condition of which would be the free extradition of suspects between member nations.
Indeed, the north of Cyprus has looked increasingly willing to give up its fugitives. A £4million row with the island’s tax authorities may also have left Nadir feeling insecure. It could be that he has decided to jump before he is pushed.
Friends have suggested that his decision to return to Britain may have been further influenced by the recent change of government. As a former close associate and donor of the Tory party, perhaps he hopes the administration will smile on him.
“I hope Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg might be interested,” he said recently. “If they’re interested in justice they have a tremendous case here in front of them.”
Nadir is also a lifelong Anglophile and reportedly hates the fact that he has been exiled from the country he loves.
“He basically thinks England is full of decent chaps, and that he is one of them,” one friend said.
He is certainly obsessed with his image. Nadir has four grown-up children, two by his first wife and two by a former mistress, but in Polly Peck’s heyday Nadir was viewed as a notorious lothario. Indeed, he was linked to a veritable harem of young lovers and secretaries.
And little has changed. When he married his current wife Nur five years ago – she had been his employee for just 25 days when he popped the question – she was just 21.
Which perhaps explains why he may also have had plastic surgery. Indeed, his pinched eyes and smooth forehead suggest he has spent at least some of the millions he has salted away on enhancing his looks.
How he will run his overseas businesses from Mayfair, and fund his lavish lifestyle, however, remains unclear. In Britain, he is, after all, a bankrupt. Despite making his vast monthly rental payments, he may even be entitled to legal aid.
There is no question that the Serious Fraud Office has fumbled and blundered its way through this case.
Nadir was originally charged with 66 counts of fraud involving more than £34million that had, it is alleged, been stolen from the shareholders of Polly Peck.
But Nadir, ever the great wizard, was able to win over shareholders, the City of London authorities, the judicial system and the Tory party. If the SFO proceeds with its case, and there is already some doubt about that, it will need to simplify and cut down the charges.
There are other difficulties, too. In order to proceed, the SFO will also have to convince itself that it is in the public interest. After all, is it worth spending more millions pursuing an already broken man? But one thing is absolutely clear: if the SFO does not bring Nadir to court it will be a national disgrace.
Tens of thousands of small shareholders lost hundreds of millions of pounds by investing in Polly Peck. Life savings were wiped out, pension pots depleted and lives ruined. We need to know how and why this happened – and whether Nadir’s dream really was built on a shabby lie.
(First published in the Daily Mail)
From fruit trader to fugitive tycoon
– Asil Nadir was born in the north of Cyprus in 1942 and moved to the UK in the 1950s. He built Polly Peck from a small fruit trading business into a giant conglomerate including textiles, hotel franchises and consumer electronics worth £2billion.
– A £1000 investment in the company in 1980 was worth £1.5million by the end of the decade and Nadir became a stock-market darling.
– He lived a tycoon’s lifestyle in London, presenting himself as a philanthropist and sponsor of the arts. Alongside him was his glamorous wife Ayesha Nadir, whom he married and divorced twice. The second time she won an estimated £20million divorce settlement – ten per cent of his then £200million fortune.
– In 1989 city authorities began an investigation into alleged manipulation of the company’s share price.
– The company went down in 1990 owing investors £1.3billion. Nadir was accused of fraud and charged with counts of theft amounting to £34million.
– Nadir was a major donor to the Conservative Party and the scandal exploded at Westminster, dealing a severe blow to the Government of John Major. A Prime Ministerial aide, Michael Mates MP, was forced to resign after it emerged he had given Nadir a watch inscribed with the words: ‘Don’t let the buggers get you down.’
– Accused of lining his pockets at the company’s cost, Nadir claimed he was the victim of a Greek-inspired political conspiracy, and accused the CIA and MI5 of plotting against him.
– In May 1993, he fled to France in a private jet and then to Cyprus only months before he was due to stand trial.
