Prisoner on home leave 'flees to Cyprus'

A TURKISH Cypriot businessman serving a five-year jail sentence for VAT fraud is missing after failing to return from weekend home leave, the Prison Service said yesterday. But a spokesman could not confirm reports that Gultekin Mustafa Ben had fled to northern Cyprus.

Three months ago, the former Polly Peck chairman, Asil Nadir, jumped pounds 3.5m bail and fled to the self-proclaimed republic of northern Cyprus while facing theft charges over his collapsed business empire.

Ben's disappearance is the latest in a series of escapes by inmates on home leave, which the prison service is reviewing.

All forces were circulated with his description and an 'all-ports alert' issued by Kent Police but he has not been seen since he left Stanford Hill open prison in Sheerness, Kent, on Saturday morning for a five- hour family visit.

In the Cypriot capital Nicosia, a diplomat at the British High Commission told Reuters news agency that he was checking a report in the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Halkin Sesi that Ben had arrived in northern Cyprus on Sunday. If it was confirmed, 'we would ask for him to be returned to Britain', the diplomat said.

Ben was jailed in March at Southwark Crown Court, London, for a tax fraud understood to involve clothing factories, illegal immigrants and false invoices. He was being held at Stanford Hill where he was considered a 'trusted prisoner'.

The prison service spokesman said that Ben had already been allowed out five times for legal and family visits and had always returned.