Donor of the Week: Asil Nadir
Author: Jack Maizels
Published on Aug 31, 2012
Our Donor of the Week series aims to shed some light on the people, companies and organisations who are funding our political parties. Each week, we’ll look at the chosen donor’s political involvement, their donation history and any controversy associated with their actions, and question whether this really is the best system for financing our politics.
Who he is:
- A Turkish Cypriot businessman and former CEO of multinational conglomerate Polly Peck International, whose operations included citrus fruit, electricals and textiles
- Polly Peck became one of the fastest growing British businesses in the 1980s, reaching a value of £1.7bn by the end of the decade
- However, the firm went into administration in 1991 following a Serious Fraud Office investigation, leaving 23,000 shareholders with worthless stock
Donations:
- All of Nadir’s donations came through companies and were made between October 1985 and March 1990, before political donations were made public by the Electoral Commission in 2001
- The Conservatives received three £25,000 donations from Polly Peck International itself and six donations from its subsidiary Unipac Packaging Ltd, all between £50,000 and £80,000
- These were paid into the Conservative Industrial Fund and totalled £440,000, which comes to over £780,000 in today’s money
Controversy:
- Following the fall of Polly Peck, Nadir was charged with 76 counts of theft and false accounting, but fled to northern Cyprus to avoid a trial
- He finally returned to the UK in 2010, citing the UK as finally having “the right environment” for him to receive bail and a fair trial to clear his name
- However, in August 2012, Nadir was sentenced to ten years in prison for defrauding investors and siphoning off £29m from his Polly Peck empire
- It was reported that Nadir had remained effectively in control of many Polly Peck businesses and hotels in Northern Cyprus
- Accountants who were appointed to administer Polly Peck were subjected to violence whilst trying to reclaim these assets, with one being shot in the leg and another beaten
- In 1993, Conservative minister Michael Mates, who is a candidate in the upcoming police and crime commissioner elections, was forced to resign after it emerged he sent Nadir a watch with the inscription “don’t let the buggers get you down”
- The Conservative Party have so far rejected calls to return the donations made through Polly Peck, which they say they accepted in “good faith from what was then considered to be a leading British company”
Notes:
- Inflation calculation based on CPI inflation from the end of the donation period, March 1990
- An average of monthly CPI percentage increases for each 12 month period between March and February was used in the calculation