Asil Nadir

Asil Nadir (born 1 May 1941) is a British Turkish Cypriot businessman, who was chief executive of Polly Peck, which he took over as a small textile company, growing it during the 1980s to become one of the United Kingdom's top 100 FTSE-listed companies, with interests in consumer electronics, fruit distribution and packaging.

In 1990, Polly Peck collapsed following an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and charges were brought against Asil Nadir on 70 counts of false accounting and theft, which he denied. From 1993 until 2010 Nadir lived in northern Cyprus, having fled there to escape a trial in the UK. He remained a fugitive from British justice until 26 August 2010, when he returned to London to face trial. His trial commenced at the Old Bailey on 3 September 2010, on 13 specimen charges of false accounting and theft totalling £34m. He was found guilty of 10 counts of theft totalling £29m and on 23 August 2012 was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Early life

Nadir was born in 1941 in Lefka, Cyprus. His father, Irfan Nadir, was a local businessman and police constable in the colonial police department. When he was six years old he began selling newspapers, and he moved with his family to London in the 1950s when his father expanded the family clothing business from a base in the East End of London.

Career

Nadir studied economics at Istanbul University, but returned to Cyprus before graduation to set up a clothing business. He returned to London in the 1960s, but after the invasion by Turkey of northern Cyprus in 1974, accepted the appeal of the authorities to bolster the new region economically. The Turkish occupation enabled him to take over a Greek-Cypriot owned clothing factory in Nicosia, where he greatly expanded exports to the Middle East.

Polly Peck

In the late 1970s he purchased a small British textile company, Polly Peck, which he turned into a portfolio company with which to make various corporate raiding purchases in clothing, fruit packing and later consumer electronics. Through this he came to prominence in the 1980s as a tycoon and the CEO of an organisation by then with over 24,000 shareholders and interests ranging from produce to electronics. Within a decade, Nadir had built Peck from almost nothing into a member of the FTSE 100.

His criminal mismanagement led to its collapse in 1990.

Escape to northern Cyprus

Nadir was prosecuted on various counts of theft and fraud, amounting to 66 charges, but failed to appear at the trial in 1993 having travelled to the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom, where he resided until 2010. Although a UK arrest warrant was subsequently issued for his breach of bail, it was not valid due to procedural reasons. In a 2003 interview with the BBC
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