Mammon: Fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir | Business | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close 'The best thing about England is the countryside. The ordinary British way of life, not London's hustle and bustle,' says Asil Nadir wistfully. 'I love the British countryside... Have you ever seen anywhere as green as that?' Gazing over the scorched Cypriot landscape from his mountain villa, Nadir looks almost out of place. The fugitive tycoon still wears blazers and still carries a silk handkerchief in his breast-pocket. He excuses his rusty English - 'I don't get many opportunities to practise it' - but his speech is peppered with phrases like 'goodness gracious' and 'good old chaps'. It is 10 years since Nadir, accused of fraud and embezzlement, fled Britain. Polly Peck, the fruit-to-electronics conglomerate he built almost from nothing, had collapsed with more than £1 billion of previously undisclosed debts. His 'escape' to northern Cyprus - safe from Britain's extradition laws - was a blow to the Serious Fraud Office.

It also embarrassed the many august City institutions he had charmed, as well as the governing Conservative Party, to whom he had donated generously. So Nadir's announcement that he is about to return to these shores has come as a shock. Many seasoned Asil-watchers insist he can't be serious. But he wouldn't be the first to give up a life in the sun for the possibility of jail in old Blighty. Ronnie Knight, the Security Express robber and long-term resident of the 'Costa del Crime', did just that. Knight said he missed the pie and mash. Nadir is apparently going back 'to put the record straight and be useful again'. 'You know, there are five High Court judges who believe I did not even jump bail,' he says. 'I was a victim of injustice and I don't believe that injustice of this nature should be repeated.' Nadir has been claiming for years that he was stitched up by the authorities. But now there is speculation that he is negotiating a deal with UK prosecutors. In particular, Nadir wants the SFO to refrain from asking a court to remand him in custody ahead of his trial.

The prospect of getting Nadir into the dock at last must make such a suggestion tempting, but the SFO is reluctant. 'Remember, the last time this bloke was let out on to the street, he buggered off for 10 years. Besides, it would send out completely the wrong message,' a source close to the SFO said yesterday. Robert Wardle, who led the Polly Peck investigation and is now director of the SFO, might be especially unwilling to do his old nemesis any favours. In any case, there is still the daunting matter of the trial itself. At the last count, Nadir faced 66 separate charges of theft. Some of those might now be dropped because of the time that has elapsed; but not enough to leave Nadir facing anything less than several years in prison if found guilty. He is also likely to face civil lawsuits from Polly Peck creditors seeking an estimated £500 million. Nadir insists he is not afraid of a trial. In fact, he has spent the last seven years preparing his legal defence and gathering 'rooms and rooms' of documents.

The SFO have tampered with evidence and perverted the course of justice, he claims, likening his experience to 'being gang-raped'. Nadir plans to file an 'abuse of process' case that he hopes will nix all the claims against him. In the meantime, he claims Polly Peck was 'annihilated unnecessarily by the British authorities. That cost the lives of so many people. Polly Peck International employed 40,000 people worldwide. I regret that a knife was put to the exciting and very necessary bridging role that the company played between the developing and developed world'. By July 1990, one month before his empire began to crumble, Nadir was ranked Britain's 36th richest man, with an estimated fortune of £200m. Originally a Turkish-Cypriot immigrant, he was modestly successful in the rag trade in the Seventies, before becoming one of the biggest success stories of the Eighties, as Polly Peck grew in 10 years into a FTSE-100 conglomerate with a market value of £2 billion. This was achieved through a relentless stream of varied and apparently ingenious acquisitions.

By the time of its demise, the company owned Sansui, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, much of the old Del Monte fruit business, Russell Hobbs appliances and a host of lucrative local businesses, franchises and property holdings. The dizzying sequence of deals masked a lack of financial transparency: much of Nadir's business empire was registered in northern Cyprus and other tax havens. In its later years, Polly Peck was dogged by sceptical questions about the enormous profits some of its subsidiaries were claiming and the shadowy offshore entities buying its shares. Following an abortive attempt by Nadir to take it private, Polly Peck's shares went into stock market freefall. In September 1990, the SFO raided the Mayfair offices of South Audley Management, which looked after the Nadir family trusts. Polly Peck's shares were suspended and in October the administrators were called in amid accusations of massive false accounting, embezzle ment and share ramping. Nadir declared himself bankrupt in 1991, and was charged with theft totalling £34m.

In May 1993, just months before he was due to stand trial at the Old Bailey, Nadir drove to an airfield in Dorset and boarded a secretly chartered jet for a midnight flight to France. From there, he flew to a hero's welcome in Cyprus. He has never returned. Nadir's departure, accompanied by champagne and caviar, was as flamboyant and arrogant as the man himself. He had owned a large London townhouse and country estate, and revelled in being a plutocrat and friend of the powerful. He seems to have enjoyed his exile at first. 'When I came to Cyprus I would walk for miles and miles... Nature is so faithful: you give something to it, and it gives you something back. You should see what I created from rat and snake-infested fields, it's heavenly. Where I live, I've got mountains, the sea.' But Nadir's health has suffered. He is 62 now, and looks old and exhausted. His hair is dyed, and a lifetime addiction to Silk Cut has reduced his voice to a low rumble. 'I hardly ever go out,' he says. Life in northern Cyprus is not as comfortable as it was.

Surrounded by high walls and armed bodyguards, and driven everywhere in an armour-plated black Mercedes, Nadir lives in gilded confinement. Once a mover and shaker in the City, he now has to content himself with being a well-off inhabitant of an impoverished land the size of Devon. In the late Nineties, Nadir tried to broaden his horizons in Turkey, the one state that recognises northern Cyprus. But he is understood to have returned after falling out with business partners on the mainland. His Cypriot businesses, which once included luxury hotels, a bank, a packaging firm and a newspaper and radio company, have not prospered. He no longer gets on with Rauf Denktash, president of the disputed territory and his one-time protector. Cyprus's accession to the European Union might eventually remove Nadir's immunity from extradition. Even so, many simply refuse to believe that he is coming back. 'Nadir spent a night in Brixton prison at the height of the Polly Peck scandal, and the experience still haunts him,' says one investigator. 'This must be some sort of ploy to test the receptiveness of the British authorities.

If there is the faintest scintilla of a chance that he could end up in jail here, he won't be coming back.' Profile Age 62 Education The Lycée, Famagusta, Cyprus; studied economics at university in Istanbul Family Twice married and divorced Aysegul Tecimer, a Turkish beauty queen and art expert; four children, three of whom live in Britain Career Fronted a pop band The Asils; came to Britain in 1963 and ran clothes wholesaler Wearwell in East London; set up Polly Peck in 1980 to export fruit from northern Cyprus; by 1990 the company was worth £1.8 billion Famous Former Friends Michael Mates, who was forced to resign as Northern Ireland Secretary after it emerged that he had presented Nadir with a watch inscribed 'Don't let the buggers get you down' What they say 'I was one of only two girls who haven't been to bed with Asil' Elizabeth Forsyth, Nadir's former financial adviser 'Mr Nadir went to considerable trouble to prevent me getting my hands on the audit working papers for his Northern Cyprus and Turkish companies.

I shall watch with interest to see whether he now allows these to be produced.' Chris Dickson, the accountancy regulator who investigated the Polly Peck scandal Polly Peck tycoon Asil Nadir has been released from a Turkish prison | Daily Mail Online Disgraced Polly Peck tycoon Asil Nadir, jailed for stealing millions from his empire, has been released from a Turkish prison just ONE NIGHT after being transferred from the UK Asil Nadir was jailed for ten years in 2012 for stealing millions from his firm Yesterday, he was flown from London to Istanbul to serve rest of sentence Nadir secured prison transfer deal after handing over £5million to investors He hopes to celebrate his 75th birthday next month in his homeland Cyprus For more of the latest news from Turkey visit Asil Nadir's return to UK fuelled by 'terrible homesickness' and tax run-in | Business | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close For more than 17 years, the satellite dishes topping his high-walled luxury villa in northern Cyprus have been Asil Nadir's only connection with the outside world.

Following the collapse of Polly Peck, his fruit-to-electronics empire, nearly two decades ago, the fugitive businessman has lived as a virtual recluse, cut off from the increasingly globalised market, in a state recognised only by Turkey. Now those days are over. As the Turkish Cypriot prepared to return to Britain, in the wake of last month's landmark decision by an Old Bailey judge to grant him bail, he declared himself delighted at the prospect of standing trial and "clearing his name" of 66 counts of theft totalling £34m. "It's good news. It's a very good first step," the 69-year-old told the Times. Nadir, who has long argued there was an abuse of process in the case brought against him by the Serious Fraud Office added: "I've been battling for this for all these years. It's what I've been fighting for." But the tycoon's return will not be the champagne and caviar send-off that preceded his late-night flight from a Dorset airfield when he fled the UK in 1993.

For the generous Tory party donor who was once ranked Britain's 36th richest man, England this time around will entail electronic tagging, weekly appearances at a police station and surrender of any document that might enable him to travel. His first trial hearing has been set for 3 September . But despite the indignity of such constraints, it will be a small price to pay. Life in the breakaway republic has been a far cry from the golden age when Polly Peck, a FTSE 100 conglomerate worth £2bn, was the success story of the Square Mile . At its height, before £160m was wiped from the company's value in a single day, it employed 40,000 people worldwide. Unable to travel for fear of being deported to Britain – the mini-state of northern Cyprus is not bound by extradition treaty to the UK – Nadir has instead lived in gilded confinement, constantly overlooked by armed bodyguards in a territory barely the size of Wales. Although there have been regular visits by powerful friends – including influential Tories who are believed to have played a role in persuading the SFO to lift its objection to granting Nadir bail – there has also been loneliness.

Isolated and marooned, heading business ventures that, with the exception of his Kibris Media Group, have been far from successful, the years in exile have robbed him of his looks, spirit and health. Announcing his determination to return to Britain in an interview with the Guardian nearly 10 years after arriving in his native Cyprus, he said "physical exhaustion" had prompted his decision to flee. "When you have some of the most eminent physicians and psychiatrists saying you are in danger of imminent death you have to listen to them," he said. "For a long time I have not been well." Increasingly, he has also been afflicted by bouts of "terrible homesickness". The father of four, who married a Turkish Cypriot business school graduate 43 years his junior in 2005, grew up in Cyprus when it was a British colony. He has said that nostalgia for the UK has also contributed to his unwavering legal battle to return once the threat of arrest was dropped and bail granted. "I miss the countryside and ordinary British way of life," he told the Guardian.

"I feel very disappointed that a country I loved so much, that I have done so much for, should taint its image by treating me in the manner that it has. I was prosecuted before there was any evidence, before a proper investigation was even conducted." Run-ins with authorities in the Turkish Cypriot enclave may also have played a role in his decision to return to Britain. Last year, Kibris Media Group was hit by a £4m tax demand. "Asil always has good relations with the powers that be here, but the tax business depressed him greatly and has, I know, played a role in his desire to go back," said a friend.

"Clearing his name is his priority now but … the time has really come when he also wants to be close to his family and friends in Britain." Lawyers concerned that ageing witnesses, lost documents and 17-year time lapse will make it impossible to try Polly Peck boss Published: 26 Aug 2010 Polly Peck tycoon and Conservative party donor who fled Britain 17 years ago lands at Luton airport and protests his innocence Published: 26 Aug 2010 In time, Asil Nadir came to cut a forlorn figure in northern Cyprus Published: 26 Aug 2010 Police, bodyguards and a media scrum mark Polly Peck tycoon's return Published: 26 Aug 2010 ‘Everything will be very nice’ as Nadir returns - Cyprus Mail Cyprus Mail ‘Everything will be very nice’ as Nadir returns April 23rd, 2016 Angelos Anastasiou Cyprus 0 comments Asil Nadir when he returned to the UK in 2010 Turkish Cypriot fraudster Asil Nadir, who was extradited to Turkey by British authorities but released after spending less than 24 hours in

 a Turkish prison, returned to Cyprus on Saturday morning, Turkish Cypriot media reported.

“After regaining his freedom, Asil Nadir this morning came back,” Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris Postasi reported on its website. The paper quoted Nadir as saying “everything will be very nice” upon his arrival. The 75-year-old’s homesickness of six years was thus ended, the paper said. KibrisPostasi also reported on the breakaway regime’s ‘deputy prime minister and finance minister’ Serdar Denktash, who was at Ercan airport when Nadir arrived. “I saw the joy in his eyes,” Denktash was quoted as saying. “He will surely become useful for the island once again.” Nadir on Saturday visited his parents graves before spending the day with his family in Bellapais. Nadir had been jailed in Britain in 2012 for stealing millions from his business empire. He was released in Turkey on Friday just one day after he was returned there to complete his sentence, local media reported. Nadir was flown from London to Istanbul on Thursday evening after British authorities accepted his request to serve the rest of his sentence in Turkey.

His sister Bilge Nevzat thanked Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for their efforts in her brother’s extradition and release. Asil Nadir and Serdar Denktash in the north on Saturday The 75-year-old was jailed for ten years in 2012 for stealing £29m from Polly Peck, an ailing textiles company which he transformed into one of the most successful British firms of the 1980s. Its later collapse was one of Britain’s biggest corporate failures and was an embarrassment for the Conservative Party, which had accepted big donations from Nadir in the 1980s. Earlier on Friday, a Justice Ministry spokeswoman in London said government policy was to remove foreign criminals to their own countries. “Arrangements were made with the Turkish government for his removal as part of our prisoner transfer agreement,” she said. Nadir had arrived on a Turkish Airlines plane and was escorted to a police station at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, the private news agency Dogan reported. Television footage showed him sitting in the back of a car as it arrived at the gates of Silivri prison, west of Istanbul.

The repatriation took place after Nadir repaid £2m he owed the legal aid agency and £5m in compensation he paid earlier. Polly Peck collapsed in 1990 when British officials began a fraud investigation. Nadir was arrested but after being released on bail fled the country in a private plane to live in the Turkish Cypriot breakaway state in northern Cyprus, where he was beyond the reach of British law. Nadir returned to London in 2010 to clear his name after 17 years on the run, but he was found guilty of 10 out of 13 charges of theft. Why fugitive Asil Nadir (and the wife 43 years his junior) will do ANYTHING to return to Britain | Daily Mail Online Why fugitive Asil Nadir (and the wife 43 years his junior) will do ANYTHING to return to Britain comments A £3million villa in northern Cyprus. But who lives there? Were this an episode of the television show Through The Keyhole, there would be no shortage of clues for Loyd Grossman, the programme's former presenter, to let his strangulated vowels loose on.

Behind gigantic wooden gates manned by an armed bodyguard, the CCTV cameras that track visitors suggest that whoever inhabits this luxurious pad is unusually keen on home security. Defiant: Asil Nadir, 69, with his wife Nur, 26, in their northern Cyprus exile Inside, the place is awash with antiques and oil paintings. One of these depicts a lithe black panther on the prowl which (Grossman would no doubt reveal) previously hung over the property owner's desk in London, where he ran one of Britain's most successful businesses. And, clearly, whoever lives here has got an eye not just for fine art. There are photographs of a recent wedding on the mantelpiece that capture the moment a balding man marries a beautiful woman young enough to be his granddaughter. But the biggest giveaway is the two parrots chattering away in the background. They have been taught to speak, and were you to ask them their names the game would surely be up: one is called Polly, the other Peck. Welcome to the home of Asil Nadir, who has been on the run from British justice for the best part of two decades following the calamitous collapse of his Polly Peck empire.

The multinational company that dealt in everything from fruit to fashion was one of the biggest City success stories of the 1980s, delivering returns to shareholders of up to 1,000 times their original investment. Nadir was a close friend of the Tory party, donating a total of £440,000 to them. Might the party's return to power change things? As its boss, Nadir revelled in his success. There were luxury properties in London, Leicestershire and Rutland, an island in the Aegean, a dozen racehorses and a series of romantic liaisons with a stable of beautiful, younger women. With wealth came influence. Nadir was a major Tory party donor, a frequent guest at 10 Downing Street, and rubbed shoulders with Royals. By 1990 the man who had arrived in Britain as a 20-year-old immigrant was the boss of an international company valued at £2.2billion. His personal fortune placed him 36th on the Sunday Times Rich List. Then it all went spectacularly wrong.

That same year a bankruptcy petition was lodged against Nadir by his own stockbrokers demanding payment for Polly Peck shares worth £3.6million. The Serious fraud Office raided his management company's offices and Polly Peck shares crashed before trading was suspended. In a single day, £160 million was wiped off the company's value, sparking its collapse. Nadir was subsequently arrested and charged with theft and false accounting. It is alleged that tens of millions of pounds were transferred out of Polly Peck and into secret accounts in northern Cyprus and elsewhere. With Polly Peck liabilities of £1.3billion, creditors were eventually paid just 2.9p in the pound - while shareholders got nothing. Back in Britain: Nadir in 1993 shortly before he skipped bail set at £3.6m Nadir was charged with 66 counts of theft totalling £150 million, later reduced to £34million. But in 1993, months before he was to face trial at the Old Bailey, he fled in his private jet. He headed to Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, where he has remained.

Not only is it where he hails from, but it has no extradition treaty with Britain and has become a popular bolthole for British fugitives. And life on the run has hardly weighed heavily on the shoulders of this particular 69-year-old fugitive. Wealthy, respected locally and with a new love an eyebrow-raising 43 years his junior - one might imagine that the tycoon would be content with his lot. Instead, in a move that has surprised many, Nadir is considering returning to Britain to face the music. Already he has instructed lawyers and a top QC to handle his case. Specifically, he wants to reach an agreement whereby it would be guaranteed that he would not be held on remand while he attempts to clear his name. If this involves house arrest in London, curfews and electronic tags, then, says Nadir, that is a price he is willing to pay. 'I would not mind that, as long as I could be free in my home, free to work with my legal team - if they had to tag me, so be it,' Nadir said this week, speaking for the first time about his bid to return to Britain.

'What I don't want is to come and be imprisoned, knowing that I am innocent. 'If justice is important for the British authorities, if a man is willing to come back, what harm would it do to say: "He wants to come back voluntarily, why shouldn't we give him an undertaking that he will be free during this process?" ' The problem is that the last time Nadir was granted bail - set at £3.5million - he broke it and fled. Should he return, the SfO has made it clear it is not minded to allow the same thing to happen again. Given that stumbling block, and Nadir's life of luxury, the timing of his latest legal manoeuvres is difficult to understand. After all, in 2003 he embarked on a similar course of action, announcing that he was shortly to return. Then, as now, he wanted to first ensure that he would be bailed ahead of any trial. He failed to secure the guarantee he was after. So what has changed today? Lauded: Nadir, who has prospered in exile, receives a business award in 1994 'I have been comfortable all my life,' Nadir explained this week.

'All the items that you count - beautiful home, beautiful wife - yes, I am happy, but knowing the injustice that was practised on me, I want to get the authorities to rectify it. 'Time doesn't cure the pain. In order to find peace and solace within me I have to continue to search every avenue within legality to bring this matter to a conclusion in the manner that it deserves.' But friends and acquaintances speculate that his decision to re-test the water may also be linked to the change of Government in the UK. Nadir was a close friend of the Tory party, donating a total of £440,000 to them. His decision to abscond forced the resignation of Michael Mates, a junior minister in John Major's Government. Mr Mates had given Nadir a watch inscribed with the words: 'Don't let the buggers get you down.' Might the return to power of a Tory-led administration change things? 'I hope Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg might be interested,' he says.

'I know it's not their main aim, but if they're interested in justice they have a tremendous case here in front of them.' 'He basically thinks that England is full of "decent chaps" and that he is one of them ' Nadir believes he has done nothing wrong, and that the case against him should be struck out. His sense of hurt is amplified by the fact that he has been vilified by a nation and a system that he wholeheartedly bought into. 'Asil is an Anglophile pure and simple,' says one friend. 'He's almost a parody of an Englishman. 'Whenever you visit him the tea is served in china cups and he's always dressed in white slacks and a Panama hat. 'He basically thinks that England is full of "decent chaps" and that he is one of them. 'Had what happened not happened, he would have been in line for a title - to be so publicly excluded from everything he aspired to and loved has hurt him far more than anyone can understand. It is for the reason he is insisting on bail if he returns. 'He does not want to be treated like another Ronnie Biggs and clapped in handcuffs the minute his plane touches down.

The shame of it would be unbearable for him.' But didn't he have the chance to clear his name in 1993? Instead, he chose to scarper. Again, Nadir has said that he basically had no choice, that he was being set up, and that the stress he was under was so severe that he feared for his life. 'I had to leave to get healthy and prepare myself for the fight,' he has previously claimed. Well, 17 years have passed since then and all the signs are that he is enjoying the rudest of health. He now spends his days either at home, painting watercolours and tending the large garden, or at the offices of the family-owned Kibris media group, in nearby Nicosia. It includes the top- circulation Turkish Cypriot daily newspaper, an English-language weekly and a TV and radio station. Nadir either drives himself to work in a BMW 325 or is driven by a bodyguard generally armed with a handgun. Former Tory Northern Ireland Secretary Michael Mates He also has business interests and ambitions further afield. He is in discussions to take over a disused airport in the north of Cyprus and transform it into a food re-packaging base.

Fruit grown in north Africa would be flown in there before being exported to Europe and the UK. And Nadir, who already has four grown-up children (two by his first wife and two by a former mistress) is in such fine fettle that he is planning on starting a new family. This is down to the fact that he continues to have an eye for the younger woman. In London, his harem included a number of personal assistants and secretaries in their 20s. His new wife Nur fits the pattern perfectly. She was just 21 years old - and an employee - when the couple married five years ago. A business student at a local university, she won an internship at his media company, and was singled out for special attention. 'When I came, they put me in a room next to him and for about two weeks they didn't give me any work,' she said in an interview with a magazine published in northern Cyprus. 'He told me stories about his father. I felt he was opening his heart to me. 'But I would say to him: "Please give me something to do.

I am here on my internship and must write reports of what I am doing." All he would say was, "Be patient".' And she didn't have to wait long. After working for Nadir for just 25 days he asked her to marry him. The wedding was a civil ceremony, and then the new Mrs Nadir was made vice-president of the company. She now has an office next to her husband's. Not bad for a first job. 'We decide the strategy together,' she explained. 'I have also made changes to his life.' Some changes can be seen at the couple's villa, near Kyrenia on the northern coast. Mrs Nadir is behind the panther picture ('It used to hang in his office in London,' she explains, 'but was taken from him ... I painted a copy for him from a photograph'). She is also an animal-lover and has five dogs and four parrots, two of them Polly and Peck. And she said the couple hoped for a child next year. 'Asil feels he worked all his life and that he didn't really enjoy his children growing up,' she revealed.

'Now he wants to have more kids and spend more time with them.' Is it any wonder, therefore, that Nadir is keen to establish just how he might be treated should he return to Britain? A spell on remand in prison during a lengthy, complicated trial would hardly give the soon-to-be septuagenarian much time to bond with new offspring. And should he be found guilty, then that relationship would have to be conducted not through a keyhole, but through a security grille in the visiting room of a British jail. Asil Nadir: The Sultan of Berkeley Square returns - MoneyWeek Home > Asil Nadir: The Sultan of Berkeley Square returns Asil Nadir: The Sultan of Berkeley Square returns 06/08/2010 Nearly two decades after fleeing to Cyprus by private jet to escape 66 charges of fraud and embezzlement, “the Sultan of Berkeley Square” is preparing to face the music, says The Daily Telegraph. Asil Nadir, the fugitive tycoon accused of stealing £35m from investors before the calamitous collapse of his Polly Peck empire in 1990, will be back in Britain for a preliminary court hearing in September.

It promises to be one of the most high-profile fraud trials in years. Nadir, who claims he was stitched up by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO, see below), has been agitating for his day in court for years. But having endured a traumatic night in Brixton jail at the height of the Polly Peck scandal, he refused to leave the safety of Turkish Cyprus (which has no extradition treaty with Britain) unless granted bail ahead of his trial. An Old Bailey judge has finally agreed. Nadir considers himself a victim, says the Daily Mail. “His sense of hurt is amplified by the fact that he has been vilified by a nation and a system that he wholeheartedly bought into.” He serves tea in China cups at his heavily guarded mountain villa and dreams of a green Home Counties landscape populated by “decent chaps” – just like him. The names of Nadir’s pet parrots, Polly and Peck, hint at a mischievous nature. Indeed, Nadir, 69, used his “Mediterranean charm” to dupe City auditors, banks, institutional shareholders and the media for years, claims The Business.

Arriving in Britain with his Turkish Cypriot parents in the 1960s, he started out as a rag-trader before spotting a gap in the market to import fruit from Cyprus. A series of audacious takeovers during the Thatcher era saw him transform a tired hosiery brand, Polly Peck, into a roaring FTSE 100 conglomerate, straddling electronics, fashion and fruit. At its peak, his empire was worth £2.2bn, delivering returns to shareholders of up to 1,000 times their original investment. With wealth came influence, says The Guardian. After donating some £4.4m to the Tories, Nadir became a frequent guest at 10 Downing Street. He owned luxury properties in London, and Leicestershire, an Aegean island and a dozen race horses. He also enjoyed a series of romantic liaisons. “Five times a night?” scoffed Nadir, when told of the sexual exploits of rival tycoon, former Burtons boss Ralph Halpern. “He can’t be doing it right.” The eventual unravelling was swift.

In 1990, Nadir’s stockbrokers lodged a bankruptcy petition over payment for £3.6m of Polly Peck shares. The SFO was brought in and the company collapsed with debts of £1.3bn. Shortly before his trial in May 1993, he drove to Dorset to board a secretly chartered jet loaded with champagne and caviar. His departure, notes The Observer, “was as flamboyant and arrogant as the man himself”. Why is he coming back now? Nadir, whose investments once accounted for a third of Cyprus’s economy, arrived on the island to a hero’s welcome. But he left a trail of carnage in his wake. Polly Peck creditors were eventually paid just 2.9p in the pound, says the Daily Mail; “shareholders got nothing”. Two of Nadir’s associates – his former secretary and the pilot who flew him out of Britain – were briefly jailed, although their convictions were later quashed on appeal. Perhaps the highest-profile casualty of the affair, however, was the Tory minister, Michael Mates, who famously gave Nadir a watch inscribed “Don’t let the buggers get you down”.

Mates was forced to resign from the Cabinet in 1993 after it emerged that he had lobbied the attorney-general on Nadir’s behalf, at the behest of the latter’s PR man. But subsequent allegations that the SFO tampered with the evidence (and supplied the prosecution with details of Nadir’s defence) may at least partially vindicate Mates’s view that Nadir was “a victim of conspiracy”, says The Independent. If the Tories are groaning at the return of this ghost from the early 1990s, the SFO has even more reason to be agitated. The timing of Nadir’s return is interesting, says the Daily Mail. Some think that his decision “to re-test the water” may be linked to the change of UK government. His position is also threatened by Turkey’s proposed EU membership and possibility of a fast-track European Arrest Warrant being applied. Nadir may also be feeling the pinch: last year he faced problems over a £4m tax demand on his Cyprus-based Kibris Media Group. Ultimately, though, the reason may be more prosaic. After years of self-imposed exile, Cyprus has begun to feel “like an open prison”, say friends.

“There are only so many beautiful sunsets a man like Nadir can take in a lifetime.” THE END OF OIL Understanding how the end of oil will affect your life and money is the single most important thing you’ll do in the next decade. And it will affect you, because it’ll affect everyone. But only a handful of people will be bold enough to see what’s happening and move early to take advantage. That’s exactly what our research report “The End of Oil” is designed to help you do. Profit from the fast-growing petcare sector The woman who runs New York's hottest hub The populist who's set to be Mexico's next leader Document:Asil Nadir: another victim of the arms-to-Iraq conspiracy? - Wikispooks Document:Asil Nadir: another victim of the arms-to-Iraq conspiracy?

From Wikispooks Jump to: navigation , search Commentary on evidence suggesting that Asil Nadir is the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice in furtherance of the continued high-level cover-up of the 'Arms-to-Iraq' scandal through the 1980's Source: Lobster ( Link ) Wikispooks Comment Powerful additional evidence of the ongoing high-level cover up of profiteering by senior politicians, officials and confidants of the government of Margaret Thatcher through illegal arms dealing during the 1980's - particularly in supplying weapons to UN-embargoed Iraq with all its attendant skullduggery. The article mainly concerns the second trial of Asil Nadir one of whose company acquisitions (Del Monte) had routinely fronted for covert CIA operations and which Nadir believed (erroneously as it turned out) he could handle. In this respect there are striking parallels with the experiences of Gerald James , former Chief Executive od Astra Holdings PLC, who fell foul of the machinations UK intel operations in their facilitation and cover-up of the illegal weapons trade. ★ Start a Discussion about this document Asil Nadir: another victim of the arms-to-Iraq conspiracy?

Asil Nadir was sentenced to 10 years in prison on 23 August 2012, for stealing £29 million from his company and from its North Cyprus subsidiary Uni-Pac. Soon after Justice Minister Chris Grayling rejected Nadir’s request for a transfer from a British to a Turkish prison, some of his supporters uploaded to their website, jancom.org, a document, described as a CIA intelligence report, naming two British former SAS men as the killers of Dr Gerald Bull, the designer of Saddam Hussein’s so- called supergun The unsolved murder of the 62-year old Canadian-born engineer Gerald Bull , shot dead outside the door of his Brussels flat on March 22, 1990, has been variously attributed to the Israeli secret service Mossad , the CIA and the Iranians. No-one heard the silenced shots and twenty thousand dollars in cash lay untouched on the body. Nine days later, Jonathan Moyle , a former RAF helicopter pilot reporting on Chilean arms deals, was found dead in a room at the Hotel Carrera in Santiago. The 28-year old editor of the magazine Defence Helicopter World had been investigating military sales to Iraq.

Despite Foreign Office suggestions that his death was an auto-erotic accident, a British inquest, reconvened in 1998, concluded that he had been unlawfully killed Two weeks after the murder of Gerald Bull , British Customs seized eight gun barrel sections, designed by Bull, manufactured by Sheffield Forgemasters, waiting at Teesport for shipment to Iraq. The supergun was never built. The apparent CIA document The apparent CIA document was taken to Asil Nadir’s London solicitors in November 2010 by Olivia Frank . Ms Frank, who spied in Germany for the Israeli secret service in her youth, says that MI5 arranged for her to be jailed at the high-security Cookham Wood prison in Kent where she was to conduct negotiations with Mrs Elizabeth Forsyth , Asil Nadir’s private banker. Mrs Forsyth, born into the McAlpine family, was jailed in 1996 for laundering £400,000 for Nadir but freed on appeal a year later. Nadir had fled to northern Cyprus in 1993 after a Serious Fraud Office raid on Polly Peck in 1990 collapsed its share price.

He lived in exile for 17 years before returning to Britain in 2010 to "clear his name". JANCOM has posted two versions of the American document at jancom.org. One is a report from the CIA Directorate of Intelligence entitled ‘Project Babylon: The Iraqi Supergun’, released under freedom of information rules in the USA and heavily redacted to obscure sensitive passages. A second ‘unredacted’ version is claimed to be the original secret document without deletions. Certain paragraphs are also marked ‘S NF NC’ a coding that means ‘secret, not to be seen by foreign nationals or by defence contractors The group JANCOM – the Justice for Asil Nadir Committee – claim that the Central Intelligence Agency report was excluded from Nadir’s 2012 trial after a dispute between defence barristers and by the use of a Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate, used by the state to hide politically sensitive documents.

On 18 March 2013, answering a question in the House of Lords from Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, Lord Wallace of Tankerness for the British government refused to say how many documents had been subjected to PII during the Old Bailey trial of the former chief of Polly Peck International. [1] Olivia Frank: The CIA dossier was to form a major part of the defence of Asil Nadir. I delivered it to Asil’s solicitor Giles Bark- Jones via his partner Fred Bunn, in November 2010 when I met Elizabeth Forsyth, once more, in a London hotel. According to Elizabeth, Her Majesty’s Government signed no fewer than 36 PII certificates. This had the effect of censoring numerous Turko-British government letters, so that I believe only one such letter was partially revealed in court and even that was redacted In summarising the British end of the arms-to-Iraq scandal, the unredacted report names several serving and former British secret agents involved in the vast Anglo-American arms smuggling operation to supply Saddam Hussein.

These agents include the late Stephan Adolphus Kock , a former officer in the Rhodesian Special Air Service, consultant to the Midland Bank and putative agent of both MI5 and MI6 ; and Sir John [later Lord] Cuckney, a former MI5 officer. Both died in 2008. The document also describes the actions taken by HMG to cover-up its arms dealing to Iraq, including the destruction of companies and the framing and prosecution of some of those companies’ directors and employees. At the core of the arms trade with Iraq was a company called Allivane International. On the Jancom site is an affidavit by an Allivane director, "Witness statement by Terence Byrne Senior", [2] which confirms some of the general allegations in the putative CIA document. Most controversially that document claims that Stephan Kock, using named former SAS and SIS personnel, murdered four people, including Gerald Bull and the journalist Jonathan Moyle . The unredacted CIA document was first referred to in the English language Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet. Asil Nadir sheltered in his native Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus between 1993 and 2010 as a fugitive from British justice.

In her 2006 online memoir Naked Spygirl, [3] Olivia Frank describes her childhood in Manchester, the influence of her father, a Jewish soldier in the British army wounded at El Alamein before serving in Palestine, and her recruitment as an agent for the Mossad who could travel on a genuine British passport. She says police in Lancashire and Cheshire harassed her parents before she was persuaded by MI5 to commit a white collar accountancy crime and from an adjoining cell, make friends in prison with Elizabeth Forsyth. Her father committed suicide. She claims to have turned her back on MI5 in prison and, after being released, was introduced to Asil Nadir by Mrs Forsyth. She says the ‘unredacted’ CIA report is genuine. Elizabeth Forsyth At her retirement home in Northern Cyprus, Elizabeth Forsyth, Asil Nadir’s former private banker, pointed out that Polly Peck International and Astra, one of the firms involved in supplying explosives to Iraq, shared the same accountant Dennis Robertson of Stoy Hayward of Baker Street, London. Elizabeth Forsyth: I spent ten months in high security prisons until I won my appeal. I received no compensation for what had happened to me.

I won my appeal because Judge Tucker had misled the jury on seven occasions. In reality it was nine occasions. During my appeal hearing one of the three judges, Lord Beldam, asked my QC if Dennis Robertson had been questioned in Asil Nadir’s first trial. Neither he nor I knew to whom he was referring. The judge then directed his question to the Serious Fraud Office who answered very quickly in the affirmative. Dennis Robertson was the partner in charge of the Polly Peck International audit for Stoy Hayward. Prior to my trial my solicitor had written to the SFO for a list of the people who had been questioned in AN’s case. Dennis Robertson’s name was not on that list........ It was some time after my successful appeal that a friend of mine, who had been closely following my trial, mentioned that she had read a book written by Gerald James , the ex-chairman of Astra. In that book Gerald mentioned that Asil Nadir was in the arms business. I decided to meet Gerald as I was not aware that this was the case. I ran AN’s personal businesses and I am sure that this suggestion would have appeared somehow or another.

I met Gerald at his club in Piccadilly and he said that if AN was not in the arms business then why were Astra Fireworks sending Uni-pac, a subsidiary company of PPI, invoices for the manufacture of propellant for the Big Gun? I was completely nonplussed. Gerald then suggested that if this event was unknown to Asil Nadir , and perhaps even to PPI, who then would have been able to open a bank account in PPI’s name? He asked who PPI’s auditors were and I told him Stoy Hayward. Seemingly both Astra and PPI accounts were being audited by the same partner, in the same firm of accountants, Dennis Robertson . Coincidentally Dennis Robertson had taken over from a previous auditor on both accounts at the same time. Late 1989! It was therefore possible that in his position as auditor for both companies Robertson could have opened the various accounts for certain military purposes. When I was able to speak to Asil Nadir again I asked him whether Dennis Robertson had ever mentioned opening accounts for PPI in Switzerland. He vaguely remembered that this had been the case.

Robertson had wanted to open accounts for the three Turkish subsidiaries of PPI in Switzerland for ‘tax reasons’. The companies were Uni-pac, Meyna and Subzest. Dennis Robertson was going to be called as a witness in Mr Nadir’s trial but he died in around 1992. Gerald James is totally convinced that his death was not accidental.’ [4] Dennis Robertson ’s name has appeared before in these columns [Lobster - Ed] , in John Burnes Joseph K and the spooky launderette in Lobster 36. [5] As Burnes commented recently: When I was blacklisted by the spooks and no college in the land would employ me, I ended up in Holland, actually applying for political asylum. I lived in Holland for three months in a refugee camp at OC Zeevolde. The core of my application process for asylum was an official interview conducted by the Dutch Ministry of Justice during which they confronted me with evidence that eight hundred thousand pounds had been banked in Holland in my name. I have had years to find out how and why eight hundred thousand pounds went through accounts set up in Holland in my name, at a time when I was an unemployed graduate student.

I now believe the money was banked by the late Dennis Robertson, my ex-wife’s accountant, and that Robertson laundered funds for SIS, the British intelligence service. Of one thing we can be certain: it was Dennis Robertson who moved Polly Peck funds from Britain to Cyprus.’ References ↑ Lord Maginnis of Drumglass is Ken Maginnis, former Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, from 1983 to 2001. Michael Mates MP was a Conservative Northern Ireland minister from 1992 to 1993 until forced to resign after the publication of a letter he had written to the attorney-general in support of Asil Nadir. Mates was a poll tax rebel and a key figure in the removal of Margaret Thatcher. He had given a watch to Nadir, a Tory donor, engraved, ‘Don't let the buggers get you down’.

Mates was a defence witness at Nadir’s 2012 trial and later last year, when he was runner-up in an election for police and crime commissioner in Hampshire, he said of his support for Nadir: ‘Every single thing that I alleged when I was taking up the case has turned out to be true......I have a clear conscience about it all.’ Document:Project Babylon and the still smoking Iraqi supergun - Wikispooks Document:Project Babylon and the still smoking Iraqi supergun From Wikispooks Jump to: navigation , search A startling account of the murky dealings of the British political establishment and security services surrounding the Arms-to-Iraq affair in general and the legal proceedings against Asil Nadir in particular Image right: Front page of the unredacted CIA Research Paper SW91-100076X Wikispooks Comment The significance of this account is enhanced by the Establishment status of the publication in which it first appeared.

It is claimed that its publication "appeared to put the upper echelons of HM Government in a state of panic, for Asil Nadir was moved [from Belmarsh category A prison - Ed] to the Category C Prison Highpoint South, located in the village of Stradishall (near Newmarket) in Suffolk, the next day" [1] References Project Babylon and the still smoking Iraqi supergun Documents examined during the Old Bailey trial of the tycoon Asil Nadir suggest the CIA revealed to the Israeli government that British agents murdered the designer of Saddam Hussein’s supergun. An “un-redacted” version of a CIA intelligence report on the 1990 shooting of Canadian engineer Gerald Bull was given to Nadir’s defence team, but excluded from his trial. The report’s cover page is over-stamped in red with the Modern Hebrew word for “secret” and carries the Hebrew text: “From office of prime minister. Date Received 11.91.” The report names two former British Special Air Service soldiers as the killers of Dr Bull .

A group of Asil Nadir supporters, the Justice for Asil Nadir Committee (JANCOM), says the American Central Intelligence Agency report was excluded from the 2012 trial of Nadir after a dispute between defence barristers during the granting of Public-interest immunity (PII) certificates to exclude politically sensitive documents. Olivia Frank The question was raised last year in the House of Lords by Lord Maginnis of Drumglass. Lord Wallace of Tankerness replied on March 18 2013 for the British Government by refusing to say how many documents had been subjected to PII during the Old Bailey trial in which the former chief of Polly Peck International (PPI) was sentenced to 10 years on August 23 2012, for stealing £29 million from his company and its North Cyprus subsidiary Unipac .

Lord Maginnis, formerly Major Ken Maginnis of the Ulster Defence Regiment The unsolved murder of the artillery expert Gerald Bull , 62, shot dead outside the door of his fifth-floor flat at Uccle, a Brussels suburb, on 22 March 1990, has been variously attributed to the Israeli secret service Mossad , the CIA , or the Iranians. No one heard the five shots from a silenced 7.65 mm pistol. He was found 10 minutes later. Twenty thousand dollars lay untouched in his briefcase. Nine days later, Jonathan Moyle , a former RAF helicopter pilot investigating arms dealers in Chile, was found dead in a room at the Hotel Carrera in Santiago. The 28-year old editor of the magazine Defence Helicopter World had been reporting on military sales to Iraq. Two weeks after the murder of Gerald Bull , British Customs seized eight gun barrel sections, designed by Bull and manufactured by Sheffield Forgemasters , on board the ship Gur Mariner about to leave Teesport for Iraq. The supergun was never built. The Justice for Asil Nadir Committee say the American document has been verified by a woman known as Olivia Frank .

She now lives in England but admits spying in Germany for the Israeli secret service Mossad in her youth. She says British counter-intelligence MI5 arranged for her to be jailed at the high-security Cookham Wood prison in Kent to conduct negotiations on their behalf with Elizabeth Forsyth , a London private banker born into the McAlpine family who was jailed in 1996 for laundering £400,000 for Nadir but freed on appeal a year later. Olivia Frank told Tribune: “On May 10 1993, six days after Asil Nadir left Britain, MI5 approached me once more. Their officer described me as perfect for a so-called deniable operation and offered me a large sum of money as reward if I would agree to meet Mr Nadir in Turkey. MI5 intended to harm him. In order to facilitate false identities, they provided new National Insurance records for me and my partner. An MI6 officer took over the operation when Mr Nadir invited me to meet him in Istanbul. By this time, the investigative reporter Roger Cook had become involved.” JANCOM has posted two versions of the American document on the world wide web.

One version is a report from the CIA Directorate of Intelligence entitled Project Babylon: The Iraqi Supergun, released on the internet under freedom of information rules in the United States but heavily redacted to obscure sensitive passages. A second un-redacted version produced by JANCOM appears to be the original secret document without any deletions. Certain paragraphs are marked “S NF NC” – a coding that means “secret, not to be seen by foreign nationals or by defence contractors”. The cover page of the un-redacted document carries two stamps, which suggest it passed though Israeli government hands. There is a red “secret” stamp in Hebrew and a black stamp in Hebrew reading: “From office of prime minister. Date Received 11.91.” If genuine, these stamps indicate that the CIA passed the secret document to Israel in November 1991, just after the government of Yitzhak Shamir agreed under intense pressure from US President George H.W. Bush to attend the Madrid peace conference. Israel’s first-ever right wing Likud government had been unwilling to attend the post-Gulf War Madrid peace conference, where George H.W.

Bush used the goodwill earned by his coalition victory over Saddam Hussein to start a peace process involving Israel, the Palestinians, the Russians and various Arab countries, including Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Yitzhak Shamir and men of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) George Bush senior was ex-CIA. Shamir was ex-Mossad. The three-day Middle East conference convened on 30 October 1991. The Israeli government date stamp on the un-redacted report suggests that the CIA had decided to reveal to Israel the secret British and American attempts to foil Saddam Hussein before the First Gulf War . The successful recapture of Kuwait had involved Syrian tanks fighting alongside the Americans. In January 1991, the US had supplied Patriot missile batteries to protect Israel from Iraqi Scud missile attacks. The November 1991 date stamp suggests the CIA document might even have been passed to the Israelis by hand during the Madrid conference. Despite the un-redacted document being closely examined and verified before Nadir’s trial by Colonel John Hughes-Wilson , an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a former member of the Nato international political staff in Brussels, the report was not used to defend Nadir at the Old Bailey.

“The CIA dossier was to form a major part of the defence of Asil Nadir”, according to Olivia Frank. “I delivered it to Asil’s solicitor Giles Bark-Jones via his partner Fred Bunn, in November 2010 when I met Elizabeth Forsyth, once more, in a London hotel. “According to Elizabeth, Her Majesty’s Government signed no fewer than 36 PII certificates. This had the effect of censoring numerous Turko-British government letters, so that I believe only one such letter was partially revealed in court and even that was redacted.” The un-redacted report names several serving and former British secret agents said by the CIA to be involved in a vast Anglo-American arms smuggling operation to supply Saddam Hussein. These agents include Stephan Adolphus Kock , a former officer in the Rhodesian Special Air Service and consultant to the Midland Bank who was born in Czechoslovakia and died in Scotland at his home at Ellanabeich on the island of Seil near Oban in 2008.

The report states that Sir John (later Lord) Cuckney , a former MI5 officer who also died in 2008, was "the onetime chairman of the state-owned International Military Services (IMS)” who arranged for Stephan Kock to seize control of the British explosives firm Astra , where he “began work concealing Astra’s covert deals via Unipac”. In an astonishing paragraph on page 25, Christopher Gumbley, chief executive of Astra, is said to have “travelled to Brussels to meet Bull”. Stephan Adolphus Kock - during evidence to the Trade and Industry Select Committee - 1993 Kock maintained surveillance and discovered that they planned a lawsuit to expose UK covert deals. Consequently, Kock hired [the two ex-SAS men named in the document] to eliminate Bull. Subsequently, MoD police arrested Gumbley. He served nine months in prison on fabricated corruption charges.

Meantime, as we co-ordinated an MI6 set-up, alleged nuclear capacitors shipped from US by Euromac for Iraq was [sic] seized at Heathrow Airport, it led to the arrest of CEO Ali Daghir and Jeanine Speckman, Kock found that defence journalist, Jonathan Moyle, possessed evidence of UK covert deals. Consequently, Kock and [a third named agent] eliminated him in Santiago, Chile. [S NF NC]. Kock manipulated Project Babylon to divert media attention from the covert arms deals and tipped off UK Customs. They raided a port in Middlesborough [sic], England, and seized the final supergun consignment of barrel tubes. Kock believed that the media would leap upon the supergun story. As Bull’s project engaged the public imagination, it concealed from them the true extent of UK-approved covert deals. Although Bull had informed the UK about the true purpose of the barrel tubes from the outset, Secretary of State Ridley told Parliament that the UK had only just become aware of Project Babylon.

[S NF NC] As the UK continued to deflect responsibility, Kock arranged the arrest of supergun project manager Cowley and Walter Somers CEO Peter Mitchell, along with several Forgemasters and Walter Somers personnel. UK Customs raided Matrix Churchill, and arrested three executives, while MoD police arrested Ordtec and SRC executives connected to BMARC deals; the (mostly MI6) BMARC executive was protected to avoid exposure. Kock requested the DTI hold a public enquiry into Astra. Subsequently, Kock arranged the arrest of Unipac CEO Asil Nadir via the UK Serious Fraud Office. However, charges against Cowley and Mitchell were dropped for fear of UK deals with Iraqi supergun. As the Conservative Party sought to avoid defeat in the upcoming UK election, they lost confidence in Thatcher and forced her to resign. (S NF NC). On page 22, the un-redacted version says: The situation that made Project Babylon feasible began in 1981, as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sought to grow the British economy through covert arms deals with Iraq, then at war with Iran.

In 1982, at the outbreak of the Falklands conflict, Thatcher sought assistance from the US administration and subsequently, we provided intelligence support. Consequently, in 1983, directed by White House strategy, we co-ordinated covert operations with MI6 that eluded Congressional precincts and projected UK rules that sustained arms sales to Iraq via global covert routes established by the UK. In alliance with MI6, we set up Allivane International, at the core of covert deals with Iraq. Its ultimate owner, Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen , received funds from the UK and played a key role. Widely reported payment to the Conservative Party The un-redacted report describes how a Scottish transport firm shipped a test consignment of Gerald Bull’s supergun propellant disguised as chocolate for re-packaging in Cyprus by Asil Nadir’s subsidiary firm Unipac. In 1997, the late Lord Harris of Greenwich told the House of Lords that the Serious Fraud Office had found at Polly Peck the stubs of six cheques from the NatWest Jersey account of Unipac, indicating that the company had paid £365,000 to the Conservative Party.

It was Nadir’s failure to account for the movement of cash between London and Northern Cyprus that led to his conviction for theft. The un-redacted report states: “The UK pledged Bull funds to buy carbon fibre plant Learfan in Northern Ireland; it formed part of Iraq’s nuclear missiles programme. Pressure from US and Israel reversed the proposition. Bull’s dissent ended when Kock informed him via the UK Foreign Office, that he could meet with an ‘imminent accident’.” Two faces of a woman who says she spied for the Mossad, MI5 and MI6 IDF ID card pic ‘We were given fresh NI and NHS numbers while awaiting assignment for British Intelligence’ The CIA document first surfaced in the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet. Asil Nadir had sheltered in his native Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus between 1993 and 2010 as a fugitive from British justice. In a 2006 online memoir, Naked Spygirl , Olivia Frank describes her childhood in Manchester, the influence of her father, a Jewish soldier wounded at El Alamein, and her recruitment as an agent for Mossad who could travel on a genuine British passport.

She says police in Lancashire and Cheshire harassed her parents until she was persuaded by MI5 to commit an accountancy crime and make friends in prison with Elizabeth Forsyth . She claims to have turned her back on MI5 in prison. After release, Elizabeth Forsyth introduced her to Asil Nadir. Olivia Frank says the un-redacted CIA report is genuine. JANCOM claims: “Many documents were deliberately suppressed in court during Asil Nadir’s 2012 trial in London. They would have embarrassed the authorities. They prove that Nadir had been framed by British and American intelligence agencies in a government campaign of dirty tricks, lies, the jailing of innocent men, and even murder, to cover up the fact that both governments had been secretly selling illegal arms to Saddam Hussein using Asil Nadir’s companies.” At her retirement home in Northern Cyprus, the former private banker Elizabeth Forsyth pointed out that Nadir’s Polly Peck International and Astra, one of the firms involved in supplying explosives to Iraq, had shared the same accountant, Dennis Robertson of Stoy Hayward in Baker Street, London. Elizabeth Forsyth pictured in 1996 I spent 10 months in high security prisons until I won my appeal.

I received no compensation for what had happened to me. I won my appeal because Judge Tucker had misled the jury on seven occasions. In reality, it was nine occasions. During my appeal hearing, one of the three judges, Lord Beldam, asked my QC if Dennis Robertson had been questioned in Asil Nadir’s first trial. Neither he nor I knew to whom he was referring. The judge then directed his question to the Serious Fraud Office who answered very quickly in the affirmative. Dennis Robertson was the partner in charge of the Polly Peck International audit for Stoy Hayward. Prior to my trial, my solicitor had written to the SFO for a list of the people who had been questioned in AN’s trial. Dennis Robertson’s name was not on that list. If that statement, which we eventually received after several requests to the SFO, had been given to us, it would have shown that the charge of handling £400,000 had been registered in the audited books of PPI as a genuine back-to-back transaction.

It was some time after my successful appeal that a friend of mine, who had been closely following my trial, mentioned that she had read a book written by Gerald James , the ex-chairman of Astra. In that book, Gerald mentioned that Asil Nadir was in the arms business. I decided to meet Gerald, as I was not aware that this was the case. I ran AN’s personal businesses and I am sure that this suggestion would have appeared somehow or another. I met Gerald at his club in Piccadilly and he said that if AN was not in the arms business then why were Astra Fireworks sending Unipac, a subsidiary company of PPI, invoices for the manufacture of propellant for the Big Gun? I was completely nonplussed. Gerald then suggested that if this event was unknown to Asil Nadir, and perhaps even to PPI, who then would have been able to open a bank account in PPI’s name? He asked who PPI’s auditors were and I told him Stoy Hayward. Seemingly, both Astra and PPI accounts were being audited by the same partner in the same firm of accountants, Dennis Robertson .

Coincidentally, Dennis Robertson had taken over from a previous auditor on both accounts at the same time, late 1989. It was therefore possible that in his position as auditor for both companies Robertson could have opened the various accounts for certain military purposes. When I was able to speak to Asil Nadir again, I asked him whether Dennis Robertson had ever mentioned opening accounts for PPI in Switzerland. He vaguely remembered that this had been the case. Robertson had wanted to open accounts for the three Turkish subsidiaries of PPI in Switzerland for ‘tax reasons’. The companies were Unipac, Meyna and Sunzest. Dennis Robertson was going to be called as a witness in Mr Nadir’s trial but he died in around 1992. Gerald James is totally convinced that his death was not accidental. I must make one matter clear. I was instrumental in handing documentation which I had been given during my investigations into this rather lurid business but neither I, nor Mr Nadir’s family, were involved in the construction of the website on which the documents have been published.

Michael Mates MP was a Conservative Northern Ireland minister from 1992 to 1993 until forced to resign after the publication of a letter he had written to the attorney-general in support of Asil Nadir. Mates was a poll tax rebel and a key figure in the removal of Margaret Thatcher. He had given a watch to Nadir engraved ‘Don’t let the buggers get you down’.

Mates was a defence witness at Nadir’s 2012 trial and in 2013, when he was running for election as police and crime commissioner in Hampshire, he said of his support for Nadir: "Every single thing that I alleged when I was taking up the case has turned out to be true……I have a clear conscience about it all." Robin Ramsay , author of Conspiracy Theories and Politics and Paranoia, discussed the validity of the CIA report in the summer 2013 edition of the specialist magazine Lobster : "In recounting the US-UK (but apparently mostly UK in this account) covert operations to arm Iraq and the subsequent events, it describes four assassinations – Gerald Bull , journalist Jonathan Moyle , Belgian politician André Cools , and one Lionel Jones – commissioned by the late Stephan Kock , allegedly of MI6, and carried out by British (SAS) personnel. This was followed by a vast judicial-state conspiracy to cover it up. But is the document genuine? We will probably never know: the CIA certainly won’t confirm it." MI6 has in recent years insisted that its officers do not have a licence to kill anyone.

The former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove said: “Assassination is no part of the policy of Her Majesty’s Government”, and entirely contrary to the agency ethos. However, it has been argued that Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act might protect a British agent involved in murder abroad. This curious and little-known law was intended to protect British spies from being prosecuted or sued in Britain after committing crimes abroad. Section 7, offering protection to spies involved in bugging and bribery, might be extended to an agent embroiled in far more serious matters in a foreign country, including murder, kidnap or torture, provided the actions of the agent were authorised in writing by a secretary of state.

Martin Tancock, JANCOM webmaster Martin Tancock in Secret Justice: Public Interest Immunity Certificates (PIICs) and their use in the Asil Nadir Trials claims the two trials of Asil Nadir were staged by civil servants in the East European tradition: “With the rise of Thatcher, and the great show trials of the early nineties: [Euromac]], Ordtec , Matrix Churchill , Elizabeth Forsyth , Asil Nadir ; the iron fist of political control has been worthy of anything that has come out of Eastern Europe. In those trials evidence was not properly investigated, it was suppressed, it was manufactured and PII was imposed. Witnesses were not called or barred from attending the trial; allegations of corruption were made without evidence; reporting restrictions were imposed and evidence was heard in secret. Juries were misdirected.” Wikipedia defines show trial as a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as an impressive example and as a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.

Show trials tend to be retributive rather than correctional justice and also conducted for propagandistic purposes. The term was first recorded in the 1930s. The three people accusing Britain of staging an East European-style show trial at the Old Bailey – a daughter of the McAlpine family, a former officer in the Ulster Defence Regiment and a former secret agent for the Mossad – have been given no explanation of how 36 Public Interest Immunity certificates could conceivably be lawfully deployed to conceal documents in a mere fraud trial – even if that trial concluded with the long-delayed 2012 conviction of Asil Nadir - a Conservative party donor in the days of Margaret Thatcher .

Question: Which, once successful hosiery company was set up by Asil Nadir?
Answer: POLLY PECK