Turkish Cypriot businessman Asil Nadir, as soon as a fugitive from justice for stealing tens of millions from his British Polly Peck conglomerate, has died, a social media publish by his spouse stated. He was 83. The information was confirmed to the Occasions newspaper by his British lawyer Giles Bark-Jones.
Nadir was being handled at a hospital within the breakaway Turkish Cypriot enclave in northern Cyprus and died in a single day, Turkish media reported hospital officers as saying.
As soon as one among Britain’s richest males and a Conservative celebration donor, Nadir was accused of stealing from Polly Peck – a fruits-to-electronics conglomerate that had a meteoric rise within the Nineteen Eighties – to fund a lavish life-style together with purchases of antiques, racehorses and nation homes.
Nadir fled Britain in 1993 on a non-public jet earlier than the beginning of his trial for the northern Cyprus enclave, which has no extradition treaty with Britain and isn’t usually recognised internationally.
He spent the subsequent 17 or so years primarily residing below the radar at a secluded villa overlooking the Mediterranean in northern Cyprus, sometimes courting media on his claims of innocence and that he would by no means get a good trial in Britain.
Nadir voluntarily returned to Britain in 2010, vowing to clear his identify.
However in 2012, Nadir was convicted by a British court docket of plundering tens of millions from Polly Peck, which he purchased as a struggling textiles producer and constructed right into a enterprise powerhouse with a secure of manufacturers from Japan’s Sansui Electrical to a division of Del Monte fruits.
4 years right into a 10-year sentence, in 2016, he utilized to serve the rest of his time period in Turkey. After his switch there, he was launched after one night time in jail.
In its heyday, Polly Peck was the highest performing inventory on the London Inventory Change. Nadir was feted by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives as a significant donor and he was a frequent customer to Downing Road.
It was one among Britain’s greatest company failures, leaving 1000’s of shareholders and staff out of pocket. Some noticed its speedy rise and fall emblematic of the excesses of the Nineteen Eighties and a precursor to future monetary crises.
Nadir had admitted to taking cash from Polly Peck, however insisted he all the time balanced the books by paying cash into different elements of the enterprise.
Born in 1941 in Lefke, Cyprus, Nadir started promoting newspapers on the streets aged six, earlier than shifting together with his household to London. His huge break got here after the Turkish Cypriot administration invited him to take over crop export vegetation on fertile orchards seized from displaced Greek Cypriots within the Seventies.
In Cyprus, Nadir had pursuits in actual property and a media group, which he offered in 2022. A financial institution he chaired, Kibris Endustri Financial institution, was seized by Turkish Cypriot banking authorities in 2002, one among a number of in a monetary disaster which rattled the tiny enclave.
A charismatic determine, Nadir was revered in his native north Cyprus as a beneficiant benefactor to the neighborhood, a breakaway state remoted from most international locations besides Turkey.
However he additionally had enemies within the Greek Cypriot neighborhood, who accused him of cashing in on fruit crops on land seized in ethnically cut up Cyprus, which was divided after a Turkish invasion in 1974 following a quick Greek-inspired coup.
With Reuters
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