City: Nadir case puts fraud trials in the dock

I HAVE met Asil Nadir only once and that was in not terribly pleasant circumstances in the early 1980s. My then editor was convinced that Mr Nadir was a crook and dispatched me to Polly Peck's London offices to study the register of directors' share dealings, which he thought would reveal details of heavy insider trading. It did not but Mr Nadir was his usual courteous, charming and faintly slippery self and entertained me for a good half- hour over coffee. All this negative talk in the City and the press, he said, was in truth no more than a Greek Cypriot plot to undermine his business ambitions and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Whenever the going got tough, Mr Nadir would wheel out the same explanation.

When the Inland Revenue's special investigations unit started looking into Mr Nadir's share dealings in Polly Peck, he dismissed it as a Greek Cypriot plot. So too were the subsequent Serious Fraud Office investigation, his arrest, the collapse of Polly Peck and much of what has happened since then. Recently, he has been telling associates that Greek Cypriots were behind stories that he had attempted to bribe the trial judge. This, and related police raids on his homes, were the final straw and caused him to abscond, associates say. 'He'd had enough. Wouldn't you in the circumstances?'

Greek Cypriots can be formidable people and many of them regard Mr Nadir as the devil incarnate; it was easy for him to blame them for his travails and they became a convenient smokescreen. In recent months, however, Mr Nadir actually came to believe his own claims. As the strain of the past two-and-a-half years has taken its toll, his behaviour has become increasingly odd, paranoiac and obsessive. He took to building sand-castles in his Mayfair home and he surrounded himself with images of panthers. He began to suffer from a recognised form of neurosis called perseveration, defined medically as 'obsessive persistence at a task that prevents the individual from turning his attention to new situations'.

Ernest Saunders suffered from something similar in the run-up to his trial. It's easy to see why it should happen. Suddenly to be divorced from your wealth, hemmed in on all sides, every aspect of your life under investigation, your passport removed, unable to conduct any business, required to attend weeks, months of intensive interrogation, confined in effect to your home - frankly, it would take its toll on anyone.

For Mr Nadir, the archetypal pirate tycoon, it must have been a deeply shocking experience. Under the terms of his bail, he was not allowed even to speak to his mother, let alone any of the 75,000 people that Polly Peck once employed.

Mr Nadir's lawyers believe that, had he stayed, he would have stood a good chance of being acquitted. They are convinced they could successfully have shown that the millions that flowed out from Polly Peck into Nadir family accounts eventually found their way back into legitimate Polly Peck business ventures. Essentially, the defence was that though Mr Nadir might not have conformed with proper practice for a public company, he hadn't been dishonest. Believe it if you will, but as the prosecution chopped and changed its case, as charges were dropped and then reinstated, as the case contracted and burgeoned again, Mr Nadir came to believe he could never get a fair trial. I don't want to apologise for Mr Nadir; clever and manipulative businessmen like him never entirely lose their marbles and no doubt he has stashed away a considerable pot of ill-gotten gains to support the fugitive lifestyle he must now lead. But there is equally little doubt that the process of these major fraud trials has become oppressive in the extreme. It's a nonsense that it should take three or more years to bring cases of this sort to court. It's a nonsense that the SFO, with its draconian powers, should be allowed to waltz around constantly changing its case to suit its own purposes and complicating it out of all proportion. It's hardly surprising that Mr Nadir absconded. The SFO didn't need the anonymous verbal tip-off it apparently received; anyone could have predicted he would do a bunk.