A Turkish Cypriot tycoon jailed for siphoning funds from his own company appears to have become a Christian in prison.
Asil Nadir, well known in the Turkish Cypriot community for his extensive business interests, sensationally returned to Britain to face fraud and theft charges in 2010, seventeen years after he fled to North Cyprus.
He was found guilty of the theft of more than £29m from his Polly Peck empire in the 1980s and early 1990s and jailed for 10 years.
Now the diaries of a former British minister who served time alongside him in Belmarsh prison suggest Nadir has found solace in Catholicism.
Denis MacShane, a Europe minister in Tony Blair’s government, noted with “surprise” that Nadir read one of the lessons at a Catholic service in the prison on Christmas morning.
NADIR’S PRISON LIFE
The passage is a rare insight into Nadir’s prison life, about which very little information has emerged. It was reported in February last year that Nadir had been attacked by another prisoner in Belmarsh.
The Sun quoted a source as saying at the time: “Apparently, one of the inmates was very unclean and smelt and Nadir asked for him to be washed. It is thought that this inmate who has mental health problems attacked him, although not for requesting he was cleaned.
“The family are furious that he hasn’t been given proper protection.”
It also emerged Nadir has voluntarily given up his British nationality in an attempt to secure a transfer to Turkey to serve the remainder of his prison sentence.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling refused the most recent request last year because he considered Nadir’s £150,000 payment towards his legal aid bid of more than £1 million to be too small.
It added that a transfer to Turkey could also mean Nadir is released earlier than he would in the UK, embarrassing the Conservative party to which he donated £400,000 in the 1980s.
LESSON AT CATHOLIC SERVICE
Denis MacShane had been sent to Belmarsh two days previously, having been handed a six month jail sentence for making bogus parliamentary expense claims worth £12,900.
He has since published his prison diaries, which have been serialised in the Daily Mail.
His entry for Christmas Day reads: “9.50am: My door opens and a screw barks, ‘Catholic service…’ The mass is brisk and to the point.
“To my surprise, Asil Nadir reads one of the lessons. I vaguely know his story as the Polly Peck tycoon who gave hundreds of thousands to the Conservative Party in the 1980s then went back to his native Turkish Cyprus where he avoided extradition after his company went bust.
“I chat briefly to him afterwards. He has read about my case and shrugs his shoulder as if to say, ‘British politics, what do you expect?’”
