Asil Nadir Dead at 83

Nadir rose to prominence in the United Kingdom when he transformed textile company Polly Peck into a multi-million-pound company during the 1980s before it became mired in scandal and ultimately ended in a jail sentence. He also owned a powerful media empire in the north of Cyprus until 2022.

Born in 1941 in the village of Lefka, he moved to the UK in the 1960s when his father expanded his family’s clothing business from a base in the East End of London.

He purchased Polly Peck in the late 1970s and took over as chief executive in 1980, transforming it into the main vehicle of his growing portfolio of commercial interests, which included a fruit packing company in the north and a cardboard manufacturing factory, while he later bought into consumer electronics and hotel franchises.

This included an 82 per cent share in Turkish company Vestel Electronics, a well-known manufacturer of colour televisions, Betamax video recorders, air conditioning units, audio equipment, microwaves and washing machines.

Polly Peck and its subsidiaries were also the largest employer in the north after the ‘government’, with over 7,500 employees.

Nadir was ranked at 36th in the Sunday Times Rich List by the summer of 1990, and was a generous donor to the British Conservative Party, the party of government at the time.

Back in Cyprus, he founded newspaper Kibris on July 11, 1989, the 100th anniversary of the first ever Turkish language newspaper in Cyprus, Saded.

However, the good times at Polly Peck were not destined to last for ever, and a UK Serious Fraud Office raid on South Audley Management, the company which controlled the Nadir family’s interests, triggered a run on Polly Peck shares.

Rumours of Polly Peck’s share price being manipulated persisted, and the company was forced into liquidation in October 1990, with its creditors being owed £1.3bn.

A total of 66 charges of false accounting and theft were then brought against Nadir, all of which he denied, and he was released on a £3.5m bail.

In 1993, upon the lapse of his bail, and while the detectives who were watching him were off duty to save overtime pay, Nadir left the UK on a light aircraft to France, from whence he flew back to the north.

The north having no extradition agreement with the UK, he remained there until 2010 when he returned to face trial.

On the media side of his business, Kibris became the most well-read newspaper in the north, while the company also opened a television channel and a radio station bearing the same name, as well as an English language newspaper called Cyprus Today.

Elsewhere, however, things were less rosy, with Nadir forced to sell his hotels to pay tax debts in 1994, and his bank Endustri being taken over by the north’s central bank in 2009.

Having successfully applied for bail in the UK, he returned to the country in 2010 to face trial. The trial did not begin until January 2012, owing to the complexity of the allegations.

He was found guilty of ten counts of theft of nearly £29m from Polly Peck in August 2012 and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Having served four of those years, he was transferred to Turkey as part of a prisoner transfer agreement between Turkey and the UK in April 2016. He then spent a single night in a Turkish prison, before returning to Cyprus.

He was welcomed back to the island with what UK media described as a “hero’s welcome” at Ercan (Tymbou) airport, with then ‘deputy prime minister’ Serdar Denktash greeting him as he arrived.

Back in Cyprus, he took a more hands-on approach to running the media company together with his wife Nur, operating a top-floor office at the company’s headquarters on the outskirts of northern Nicosia.

This final piece of his business empire was sold in October 2022 for US$5m to a limited company linked to Turkish business magnate Cemil Kazanci.

Nadir maintained his top floor office and his building, with the media group under new ownership moving into new premises elsewhere.

His final act in business was an unsuccessful attempt to win back the rights to run the north’s second airport in Lefkoniko after the north’s authorities handed it over to the Turkish military to use as an air base.

Nadir had been awarded a contract to run the airport in 2010 and had hoped to open it as a secondary commercial airport after Ercan (Tymbou), but had his efforts blocked and his legal challenge failed.

He is survived by his wife Nur and six children.

Source: Cyprus Mail