Beginnings Polly Peck began in 1940 as a small fashion house, founded by the husband-and-wife team of Raymond and Sybil Zelker. The clothes were designed by Sybil, and the business end was handled by Raymond.
The rapid boom years By the end of the 1970s the fashion house was struggling. Early in 1980 Restro Investments, a company Nadir controlled, bought 58% of the company for £270,000. Asil Nadir took over as
Chief Executive on 7 July 1980. On 8 July 1980, Polly Peck launched a
rights issue to raise £1.5 million of new capital for investments abroad. This was one of the first foreign acquisitions of a major Japanese company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Also in 1989, Polly Peck bought the former
Del Monte fresh fruit division for $875 million from
RJR Nabisco, which had previously acquired it. Polly Peck then gained the ultimate accolade of being admitted to the
FTSE 100 Share Index in 1989. It became a holding company for a worldwide group of over 200 direct and indirect subsidiary companies. With pre-tax profits of £161.4 million, net assets of £845 million and 17,227 employees, the Polly Peck group was one of Britain's top one hundred quoted companies. Polly Peck and its subsidiaries were the largest employer in northern Cyprus (after the state) with 7,500 employees there.
Attempt to take the company private In August 1990 Nadir came to the view that the company was undervalued and then announced that he was taking it private. In 1991, Polly Peck Group transferred all of its Vestel Electronics shares to one of its subsidiaries, Collar Holding BV, which was based in the Netherlands. Following the collapse of the Polly Peck Group, PPI was placed in administration. In November 1994, Ahmet Nazif Zorlu acquired PPI from the administrator by buying the entire share capital of Collar Holding BV, which at the time held 82% of the Polly Peck's issued share capital.
Leaving the UK and returning Nadir left the UK just after his £3.5 million bail had lapsed, while the detectives who were watching him were off duty to save overtime pay on a
bank holiday. He left on a light aircraft to France, where he flew on to Turkish Cyprus, which has no extradition agreement with Britain, and until 26 August 2010 he remained a fugitive in northern Cyprus, which is only recognised by Turkey. Peter Dimond, the pilot who flew him out of Britain, was convicted of aiding a fugitive, but the conviction was quashed once it was determined that the bail had lapsed. In 1996, Mr Nadir's aide Elizabeth Forsyth was convicted of laundering £400,000 stolen from Polly Peck and sentenced to five years. Ten months later, she too was freed by the Appeal Court. A government minister,
Michael Mates, resigned in 1993 following persistent press coverage of his close links to Nadir which had led to Mates writing to the attorney general questioning the handling of the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. Nadir has persistently claimed that the charges that he stole more than £30 million from the company are "baseless" and has claimed that the SFO abused its powers, making a fair trial impossible. In 2002 the accounting disciplinary body, the Joint Disciplinary Tribunal, fined Stoy Hayward £75,000 for its role as group auditor to Polly Peck. In July 2010 it was reported that Nadir intended to seek bail to return to the United Kingdom to face the 66 counts of theft. Over the years his business interests have shrunk. His hotels were sold to pay off tax debts in 1994, his bank Endustri was taken over by the
Central Bank of Northern Cyprus in 2009, and Kibris newspaper, a TV and radio station are all that remains of his known empire. On 29 July 2010, Nadir began legal proceedings to be granted bail in the UK, allowing him to return. The Serious Fraud Office said if Mr Nadir did return to the UK he would be put on trial for 66 counts of theft. On Friday 3 September 2010, Nadir was put under a midnight to 6am curfew, an electronic tag and was made to surrender his passport. His trial started on 23 January 2012, on 13 specimen charges of theft and false accounting. On 22 August 2012, Nadir was found guilty on ten counts of theft of nearly £29 million from Polly Peck. The jury found him not guilty on three counts. The jury had been advised at the start of the trial that the 13 were specimen charges and the overall amount allegedly stolen was about £146 million. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. ==See also==