Former Turkish Cyprian businessman Asil Nadir was condemned to ten years in prison by an English courtyard on Thursday after a jury found the tycoon guilty of ten accusations of thieving from his collapsed Polly Peck conglomerate, 22 years after the company folded.
A jury at the Central Criminal Court returned 7 guilty verdicts on Wednesday, besides 3 convictions decided on Monday. Nadir, 71, was found innocent on 3 other charges of theft. Condemning was set for Thursday.
Nadir was condemned of thieving a total of 28.6 million pounds ($45 million) from Polly Peck, which he built from a small textile firm in London into a conglomerate with interests in food, electronics and the leisure industry.
The company collapsed in 1990 with debts of 550 million pounds. In 1993, Nadir took flight to northern Cyprus, which had no extradition treaty with Britain, briefly before he was to stand trial.
Nadir returned in 2010 to face criminal accusations and went on trial in January accused with 13 counts of theft.
His wife Nur told he planned to appeal.
“A guilty man doesn’t come back to face justice of his own accord,” told Mrs. Nadir, 28.
Prosecutor Philip Shears had said to the jury that Nadir, as chairman and chief executive of Polly Peck, had diverted millions of company funds to himself, his family and his associates.
At the end of 1989, Shears told, more than 80 percent of Polly Peck’s cash balance was in subsidiaries in Turkey and northern Cyprus, and most of the money wound up in a maze of offshore companies.
