Asil Nadir arrives in UK to face fraud charges

Polly Peck tycoon and Conservative party donor who fled Britain 17 years ago lands at Luton airport.

One of Britain's most notorious fugitives arrived in the UK today in an attempt to clear his name 17 years after fleeing the country in a private jet.

Asil Nadir landed in the cargo area at Luton airport just after 1.30pm, returning to face the multimillion-pound fraud charges that followed the spectacular collapse of his Polly Peck food and electronics empire in 1993.

As a group of about 30 journalists waited for Nadir to step back on to British soil, immigration officials processed his papers on the privately chartered Airbus A320.

Nadir said a few words before climbing into a waiting Jaguar with blacked-out windows. The car took the tycoon and his wife, Nur, to a Mayfair flat.

Nadir is due to appear at the Old Bailey next Thursday. Representatives of Bark & Co, his London lawyers, members of his personal staff and journalists from the Times and Sky News, including presenter Kay Burley, were part of Nadir's entourage on the jet.

Nadir had been given special landing arrangements: his plane – which only had around 15 passengers despite having capacity for over 100 – landed on the normal landing strip and taxied towards the passenger section of the airport.

He was then allowed to leave via a gate normally reserved for the transit of cargo to and from planes.

Speaking from Turkey before flying to the UK, the 69-year-old said he believed the legal "environment" was right for him to return. Nadir told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm hoping to get a fair trial, if this matter goes to trial, obviously. 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. My health had deteriorated and at that point I felt that, to save my life, I had to come to recuperate … I have been asking since then for the environment to be as it is today."

Nadir claimed he had already "proved my innocence to the authorities without doubt, but nobody took any notice at that time", and denied having made a deal over his treatment when he returns.

"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," he said. "There is no deal. There is only one deal and that is, I am hoping I will see for the first time some justice."

Nadir will have to wear an electronic tag until the end of his trial and pay a bail surety of £250,000.

The fugitive tycoon and Conservative party donor will resume a court battle that came to a dramatic end when he fled Britain in 1993. He had been due to answer 66 charges of theft and false accounting in a £34m fraud trial.

Nadir, who now runs a media firm in the Turkish-controlled territory, will argue that there was a grave abuse of process in the case brought against him by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). For years he has alleged that the police and the SFO placed the judge in his case under improper pressure, made false allegations of corruption against him and his advisers and seized documents necessary for his defence.

Polly Peck, the company that Nadir built up from scratch, dealt in everything from fruit to fashion and was one of the biggest City success stories of the 1980s, delivering returns to shareholders of up to 1,000 times their original investment.

The former rag salesman was 39th on the Sunday Times Rich List, owned a string of luxury properties in Britain, an island in the Aegean and a dozen racehorses. He was also a major Tory party donor, a frequent guest at Downing Street, and was friends with the royal family.

His empire collapsed in 1990 when he was arrested on theft and false accounting charges.

Last month he was granted bail by an Old Bailey judge, who said he hoped his ruling would end the "legal limbo" which had existed since Nadir fled. The judge also quashed an arrest warrant for Nadir and imposed 10 conditions on bail, one of which is to appear at the Old Bailey on 3 September.

Nadir's newly issued British passport will be surrendered to the SFO, but it is expected that the electronic tag he will have to wear as part of the bail agreement will not be fitted until after his court appearance.

Nadir's return to Britain is a major event in northern Cyprus, where he has extensive business interests and controls the Kibris media group.

Nadir maintains his innocence. In a related case in 1997, the court of appeal said Polly Peck's finances involved "a complex web of companies and organisations incorporated 'offshore' in Jersey and on the continent". In 2002, the Accountants Joint Disciplinary Board said that "because of an almost total lack of controls within Polly Peck's head office, Mr Nadir was able to transfer funds out of the parent company's London bank accounts without question or challenge".

Nadir's spectacular fall embarrassed John Major's government after it emerged that a Conservative minister, Michael Mates, had given Nadir a watch engraved: "Don't let the buggers get you down." Mates, the minister of state for Northern Ireland, resigned over his links to the businessman.

In interviews today, Nadir did not rule out supporting the government financially again, arguing that there was nothing wrong with donating to a political party. He said: "It's only fair if you approve of the policies of a government, if you want to extend their power, why not do it? It's not criminal, it's allowed."

(Published by Guardian - August 26, 2010)