Re: McCanns v Bennett: 22 August 2012 - The Legal Services Commission change their minds again, it's CIVIL Legal Aid which applies in my case, not Criminal Legal Aid [was: LSC change their minds after 8 months]...Chances of gettting Legal Aid REDUCED

by Guest 23.08.12 13:55

It is now tigger,

How did he get £5million legal aid? Guilty, but Nadir lived in luxury during his trial for theft of £29million

By Rebecca Camber, Colin Fernandez, Tom Rawstorne and Daniel Martin

PUBLISHED:01:14, 23 August 2012| UPDATED:12:49, 23 August 2012

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Nadir Asil will be sentenced today for stealing close to £29million from his international textile empire Polly Peck

Questions were being asked last night about why Asil Nadir was granted millions of pounds in legal aid while he enjoyed a gilded lifestyle in a £23,000-a-month mansion during his trial.

After nearly two decades on the run, the 71-year-old tycoon faces up to 14 years behind bars after being convicted at the Old Bailey yesterday of stealing £28.6million from his Polly Peck International textile empire.

The 22-year Serious Fraud Office investigation and seven-month trial is estimated to have cost the taxpayer around £23million.

Nadir, who will be sentenced today, will now be asked to pay back the estimated £5million in legal aid funding he was granted after claiming he was bankrupt, plus £3million in court costs.

He also faces a colossal compensation bill of £61million, after tens of thousands of pensioners and shareholders lost their life savings and 40,000 staff lost their jobs when his business empire collapsed under the weight of £1.3billion debts in October 1990.

But there were concerns last night about how much of the compensation, legal aid and court costs can be clawed back as most of Nadir’s assets are tied up in various family names, while his lavish living costs are met by other family members.

The fugitive was once one of Britain’s richest men, but prosecutors told the court he had raided the coffers of Polly Peck of up to £150million to pay for his multi-million pound property empire, racehorses, antiques, fast cars and jewellery.

However, specimen charges were brought for only a fraction of that sum.

He fled to his native northern Cyprus before his trial began in May 1993, only returning in August 2010 when he was confident that a trial would be impossible.

Yet despite claiming to be penniless on legal aid, Nadir continued to enjoy all the trappings of wealth during his trial.

He has been living in a £23,000-a-month rented mansion in Belgravia and been chauffeured to the Old Bailey every day in a Jaguar, assorted by a number of minders.

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Nadir's glamorous 28-year-old wife Nur, pictured left, outside court yesterday, and right, on Tuesday

Meanwhile his glamorous second wife Nur, 28, was bought a brand-new £70,000 Range Rover Vogue with the personalised number plate AN02NUR – standing for ‘Asil Nadir love to Nur’.

Mrs Nadir has spent her days shopping in Bond Street’s designer stores and riding horses. Nadir even hired a PR company to work on his image, reportedly paying Bell Pottinger a five-figure sum a month since October 2010.

John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘There needs to be tighter controls when those with the means to pay for their own help apply for legal aid. All too often taxpayers pay a heavy price when it’s not necessary.’

It can now be revealed how Nadir went to extraordinary lengths to dodge justice.

In 1992 investigators suspected the tycoon of trying to bribe a High Court judge in advance of his trial. The claims were never substantiated, but the SFO believed he had set aside £3.5million to pay off the judge.

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The 22-year investigation and seven month trial at the Old Bailey Court is estimated to have cost the taxoayer around £23million. Asil Nadir, far right, was supported throughout by his wife Nur, far left

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The couple, pictured left and right entering the court throughout the trial. Following his conviction Mrs Nadir said outside court that the 'unhappy affair' is not over and that her husband will appeal

On his return in 2010, he spent 16 months trying to get the case dropped. An eminent cardiologist and psychiatrist were hired on legal aid to testify that he was virtually at death’s door due to coronary heart disease, high blood pressure and a dilated aorta.

But his own doctor later conceded he was fit to stand trial, and when the trial commenced in January, Nadir, a lifelong smoker, often ate McDonald’s meals in the canteen, apparently unconcerned for his health.

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Nadir, who now claims to penniless, pictured in 1993 shortly after fleeing the UK for Cyprus before his trial began

The defendant even asked to vary his curfew so that he could stay out and party until 4am on New Year’s Eve at the luxury five-star hotel, the Luton Hoo, where suites cost up to £895 a night.

Nadir also sought to capitalise on a catalogue of blunders in the SFO investigation which threatened to derail the case.

Even when the jury retired, Nadir remained confident, telling reporters that he would consider running for office when acquitted.

He even told his domestic staff back at his £3million mansion in Lapta, northern Cyprus, that he had been cleared.

One employee told the Mail: ‘He’s been cleared. The case is all for political reasons.

He’s coming back in August.

‘He’s still got lots of money. It doesn’t seem to be running out at all. It will never ever run out because he has lots of companies.’

Yesterday Nadir remained calm as he was found guilty of ten counts of theft and cleared of another three counts.

His wife later stood on tip-toe to reach the dock to say a tearful goodbye. Outside court, she said he would appeal, adding: ‘A guilty man does not come back to face justice of his own accord.

‘My husband came back voluntarily. Polly Peck was his life. He wants justice for himself and for the tens of thousands of shareholders and employees. This unhappy affair is certainly not over yet.’

SFO director David Green CB QC said: ‘The conviction of Asil Nadir of theft on a grand scale from a public company 19 years after he fled the jurisdiction is a remarkable achievement.’

Why the Sultan of Berkeley Square tired of exile in paradise

Today, in the village of Lapta, a few miles inland from the northern coast of Cyprus, the temperature will climb into the 80s and beyond – as it does most days in the summer.

Throw in an air-conditioned luxury villa, a pool and several servants, and the set-up sounds pretty perfect.

And so to the £150million question on everyone’s lips: why did 71-year-old Asil Nadir swap the bliss of Lapta – complete with a beautiful wife 43 years his junior – for the prison cell in Belmarsh, South London, where he woke up this morning?

Some say that he found his self-imposed exile in Cyprus ‘boring’ and missed the faster pace of life he had enjoyed in Britain.

But when he set foot on British soil in August 2010 after almost two decades on the run in northern Cyprus, Nadir gave a rather different answer.

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The 71-year-old pictured at his home in Lapta, along the northern coast of Cyprus, in the early 1990s

‘For 20 years of my life I have faced these false allegations and this injustice – it is painful,’ he said. ‘I have always said that I was innocent and that has given me the courage and the determination to come back.’

At the Old Bailey last month he insisted that he was so motivated by a sense of ‘burning injustice’ that he had ignored advice from his doctors not to end his exile and risk aggravating a heart condition.

He told jurors: ‘I sometimes wonder whether living and trying to absorb this injustice, or dying – which is worst?’

Quite how Nadir will be feeling today, then, is anyone’s guess.

Close observers of the trial say that, for all his bravado, Nadir had been showing increasing signs of nervousness as the seven-month case drew to a close. In recent weeks, he cut a forlorn figure outside Court 8, eating his home-made lunchtime sandwiches from a silver foil package.

WE WON'T PAY BACK THE POLLY PECK DONATIONS, SAY TORIES

The Conservative Party has refused Labour demands to pay back donations received from Asil Nadir’s Polly Peck business empire – saying there was no evidence the money was stolen.

A Labour MP called on the Tories to honour a promise made by John Major to return the donations, thought to total about £440,000 – if the money was ‘dishonestly obtained and dishonestly donated’.
Mr Nadir was yesterday found guilty of ten thefts from Polly Peck totalling £29million.

Despite this, the Tories said they would not be handing back the money because it came not from him personally, but from his company. They said the verdict that Mr Nasir stole money from Polly Peck was irrelevant.

In a statement, the party insisted: ‘The Conservative Party has no record of having received donations from Asil Nadir. Donations were received from Polly Peck companies more than 22 years ago; these were accepted in good faith from what was then considered to be a leading British company.

‘There is no evidence that money donated to the Conservative Party from the Polly Peck group was stolen.’

Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, said that in 1993 the then Tory Party chairman Norman Fowler told the Commons that the donation would be returned if it was found to have been stolen – a promise repeated later by prime minister John Major.

He said: ‘Even John Major’s government, which was mired in sleaze, knew they’d have to give back Asil Nadir’s money if he was found guilty.

David Cameron must honour the unequivocal promises the Conservative Party have made to repay the £440,000 they accepted from Asil Nadir in the 1990s.

If he doesn’t, it will show the Tory Party aren’t serious when they claim they want to clean up politics.’

Mr Nadir claimed Tories were always ‘pestering’ him for money, and in 1987, Mrs Thatcher herself wrote to him to thank him for a £50,000 donation just before the election of that year.

It was reported 15 years ago that the Conservatives were told by accountants that £365,000 of the donations had been stolen from Polly Peck.

The Lib Dems were involved in a similar scandal four years ago when one of their largest donors, Michael Brown, was convicted of fraud and theft.

There was also questions over whether the donation was legal because he lived abroad in Majorca at the time.

However, the Electoral Commission decided the party did not have to return the £2.4million as it had been accepted in good faith.

Nadir is no fool, of that there can be no doubt. But what is now clear is that he seriously underestimated the gamble that he was taking in returning to these shores.

A number of reasons have been suggested for why he risked it all – and lost. And all have at their root in the ego of the man once dubbed The Sultan Of Berkeley Square.

To start with, friends say that he missed Britain from the moment he left it.

Mentesh Aziz, his former lawyer, recalls how on the day after Nadir fled to northernCyprus in 1993 he asked whether he was making the right choice.

‘I told him that for these white-collar offences, if you were found guilty you would get five years at most,’ Mr Aziz, 78, told me. ‘I said to him, “You have now imprisoned yourself in an open-air prison”.

And so it materialised. Imagine a man of his calibre, who ran an empire round the globe, and put him in a situation where he is stuck in a house. Imagine how boring that must be for him.’

Another friend agrees: ‘He has been talking about coming back to Britain since 2000. Don’t forget that he spent the most exciting years of his life in Britain.

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The entrance to Nadir's island retreat in Cyprus - but this morning he will be waking up in a prison cell

You can’t really compare the restaurants of Northern Cyprus – and they have their charms – with dining in Mayfair. Even a life in paradise can get dull after a while.’

But perhaps Nadir’s happy memories blinded him to the fact that the Britain he left behind is a very different place today.

To those who live here, the ‘loadsamoney’ culture of the 1980s seems like ancient history. But Nadir, like his hairstyle and wardrobe of double-breasted suits, has remained a product of the decade. His return to Britain in a private jet set the tone.

Once in London, Nadir set up home in a six-storey, £9million Mayfair townhouse, rented at a cost of £20,000 a month.

For his first court appearance at the Old Bailey he arrived in a limousine cavalcade surrounded by security guards in Armani suits and Ray-Bans.

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In his heyday Nadir, pictured in 1993, owned a fleet of cars that included a red Ferrari Testarossa, a Bentley Continental and a Range Rover

Not only has Nadir’s show of affluence raised eyebrows (the money is said to have been provided by friends, family and supporters) but it is clearly out of step with credit crunch Britain, where company bosses are expected to hide their wealth beneath hair shirts rather than flaunt it in Savile Row suits.

In Nadir’s heyday, of course, the opposite was true. This was a man whose fleet of cars included a red Ferrari Testarossa, a Bentley Continental and a Range Rover.

He had a £3million townhouse in Mayfair; a property on ‘Millionaires’ Row’ in Hampstead; Tudor Baggrave Hall in Leicestershire, which sold for £4million; and a Grade I listed Palladian mansion nearby.

As for Polly Peck headquarters in Berkeley Square, so ornate was the décor that one employee would observe that it was ‘the only company I’ve ever been at where the fixtures and fittings appreciated’.

And yet Nadir always saw himself as more than a flash-in-the-pan playboy. He wanted to be part of the establishment. And so he bought his country pile, his herd of pedigree beef cattle and his racehorses, sponsored the polo and sent a son to Eton. Then he donated £440,000 to the Tory

Party, was welcomed into Downing Street and rubbed shoulders with royalty.

To this day he has kept the thank-you note from Margaret Thatcher for his support during the 1987 election campaign, and the famous watch, inscribed “Don’t let the buggers get you down”, from Michael Mates, who was forced to resign as Northern Ireland Minister in 1993 over their friendship.

For Nadir, those things really mattered. He had made good.Nadir, to recap, moved to London in 1960 aged 19 as tensions grew between the Greek and Turkish communities in his native Cyprus.

He formed the Wearwell group in 1970, and within a decade his fashion trade business was valued at £12million.

But it was Nadir’s takeover of struggling textile firm Polly Peck International (PPI) in the late 1970s that propelled him into the public eye. He oversaw a massive period of growth, culminating in the purchase of the world-famous Del Monte fresh fruit brand in 1989, by which point PPI was worth around £2billion.

By the summer of 1990, he was named 36th in the Sunday Times Rich List and was hinting that a career in politics was beckoning. And then it all went wrong.

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The tycoon, pictured in 1993, said he would only return to the UK for trial if he was granted bail

That same year, a bankruptcy petition was lodged against Nadir by his own stockbrokers demanding payment for Polly Peck shares worth £3.6million.

The Serious Fraud Office raided his management company’s offices and Polly Peck shares crashed before trading was suspended.

In a single day, £160million was wiped off the company’s value, sparking its collapse. Nadir was subsequently arrested and charged with theft and false accounting.

As we now know, tens of millions of pounds had been transferred out of Polly Peck and into secret accounts in northern Cyprus and elsewhere. Money had also been channelled through a number of offshore companies to purchase PPI stock and bolster the company’s share price.

Each penny increase on the share price increased the value of Nadir’s holding by £1million. With Polly Peck liabilities of £1.3billion, creditors were eventually paid just 2.9p in the pound – while shareholders got nothing.

But in 1993, months before he was to face trial at the Old Bailey, he fled the UK in a twin-engined light aircraft from an airfield in Dorset. For the trip, Nadir wore an ‘Inspector Clouseau hat and overcoat’ and carried a false moustache and wig in a plastic bag.

In the years that followed, Nadir regularly raised the possibility of his return, but only if he were to be granted bail rather than held in prison while awaiting trial.

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Inside the air-conditioned luxury hideaway of Britians most notorious fugitive from justice, pictured in 2003

This was to do with his experience of a couple of nights in custody prior to his flight and also because he thought it ‘shameful’ for a man of his standing to be treated like a common criminal.

‘Asil is an Anglophile pure and simple,’ observes one friend. ‘He’s almost a parody of an Englishman. Whenever you visit him the tea is served in china cups and he’s always dressed in white slacks and a Panama hat.

He basically thinks that England is full of “decent chaps” and that he is one of them.

‘Had what happened not happened, he would have been in line for a title – to be so publicly excluded from everything he aspired to and loved has hurt him far more than anyone can understand.’

And so Nadir returned to clear his name. And not blindly, but with a calculated belief that he and his team of lawyers could prove his innocence – or beat the system.

That they fancied their chances against the Serious Fraud Office is hardly surprising.

The prosecutions of others implicated in the Polly Peck collapse had been little short of farcical.

Further, given that so much time had passed since the collapse of PPI, Nadir must have calculated that the SFO’s task would be much harder, with several witnesses having died and files having decayed.

From inside a prison cell, no doubt the charms of Lapta will magnify in Nadir’s mind. Particularly, say friends, as it had slowly begun to dawn on him that Britain in 2012 wasn’t the place he remembered from the days when he was cock of the walk.

‘Asil thinks it’s gone downhill,’ one of his closest confidantes said last night. ‘He said it wasn’t the same place he grew up in. In those days, he enjoyed the best of Britain.’

And now, the former shareholders in Polly Peck will be thinking, he is finally paying the price

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192288/Asil-Nadir-How-did-5million-legal-aid.html#ixzz24NDbRY2m

by **Tony Bennett** 23.08.12 14:00

justathought wrote:Mr Bennett
Carter-Ruck had in fact sent me a 'To Whom it May Concern' letter, intended for me to show prospective Solicitors, telling them that my case came under Criminal, not Civil Legal Aid.
Who told CR. why did they send out such a letter to you prior to official confirmation?

That's a very very good question.

I must admit I was nonplussed to receive a communciation from the Legal Services Commission [LSC] on 7 August (dated 3 August) saying I should now apply for Criminal Legal Aid - and then on the very next day, 8 August, one from Carter-Ruck saying exactly the same thing. It was as if they were then 'both of one mind'.

The reversal of their decision by the LSC less than 3 weeks later reveals a combination of the complexity of the rules, and poor management by the LSC, who should have given me the correct advice when I first applied in December last year.

It's a series of human errors IMO and not conspiracy

by **PeterMac** 23.08.12 14:32

Does your MP, or MEP know of this ?
Or Galloway ?

by aiyoyo 23.08.12 14:44

Why galloway? Is he TB's MP?

by **Tony Bennett** 23.08.12 15:18

PeterMac wrote:Does your MP, or MEP know of this ?
Or Galloway ?

Yes, my M.P. Robert Halfon (for whom I voted, incidentally) is aware of some of these issues, though not the latest ones.

He did very kindly support me in April by writing on my behalf to the Minister of Justice, Kenneth Clarke (paid propagandist and PR man for the tobacco industry), explaining the case for me to be able to defend myself, using public funds if I qualified, against the McCanns' application to commit me to prison. One of his junior ministers, Mr Djanogly, sent him a short reply which was of little or no value.

I should at this point, for the record (although I have said it before), point out that Mr Halfon is fundamentally opposed to my actions in continuing to question the McCanns' account of events. Indeed, he is on record as having 'every sympathy' for the McCanns, and he even wrote to the McCanns recently to make it clear that, although he was prepared to support my case for Legal Aid, he was utterly opposed to my actions and those of anyone else who tried to doubt that Madeleine McCann was abducted by a stranger, exactly as the McCanns have said.

In helping me in this limited way, dare I say it that Mr Halfon perhaps had this principle of the French philosopher, Voltaire [* see footnote], somewhere in his mind:

"I may disagree wholly with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it".

This principle has been shortened by some to this: "No-one has the right to silence the opinions of others".

This noble principle does not seem to apply, however, in the case of Britain's oppressive libel laws, which basically do give the rich and powerful the right to silence the opinions of others.

This is despite, in my case, my opponent, Dr Gerald McCann, having sworn on oath before the Leveson enquiry that he was a believer in the freedom of speech CORRECTION a strong believer in the freedom of speech, and had no objection to peeple 'purporting' [by which I am sure he meant 'propounding'] theories about his daughter's disappearance.

NOTE to aiyoyo: I think PeterMac mentioned Goerge Galloway because Galloway is on record as having written very sceptical remarks about the McCanns' account of events.

FOOTNOTE RE VOLTAIRE:

In 1889 a schoolteacher told a ten-year-old boy, "You will never amount to very much." That boy was Albert Einstein.

In 1954 a music manager told a young singer, "You ought to go back to driving a truck." That singer was Elvis Presley.

In 1962 a record company told a group of singers, "We don’t like your sound. Groups with guitars are definitely on their way out." They said that to the Beatles.

Man is prone to make mistakes.

The French philosopher Voltaire, an atheist and confirmed sceptic who destroyed the faith of many people, boasted that "within 100 years of my death, the Bible will disappear from the face of the earth."

Voltaire died in 1728.

Exactly 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society moved into his former house and used Voltaire's printing presses to print thousands of Bibles.

by jd 23.08.12 15:42

Mr Halfon is fundamentally opposed to my actions in continuing to question the McCanns' account of events. Indeed, he is on record as having 'every sympathy' for the McCanns, and he even wrote to the McCanns recently to make it clear that, although he was prepared to support my case for Legal Aid, he was utterly opposed to my actions and those of anyone else who tried to doubt that Madeleine McCann was abducted by a stranger, exactly as the McCanns have said.

All these MP's and Z list celebs that say this, have not read the PJ files and police statements. They are totally unaware of the actual facts. They would soon change their minds if they took a bit of time to read the files thats for sure, infact they would be horrified they were so taken in by the mccann machine

by justathought 23.08.12 17:27

Tony Bennett wrote:
justathought wrote:Mr Bennett
Carter-Ruck had in fact sent me a 'To Whom it May Concern' letter, intended for me to show prospective Solicitors, telling them that my case came under Criminal, not Civil Legal Aid.
Who told CR. why did they send out such a letter to you prior to official confirmation?
That's a very very good question.

I must admit I was nonplussed to receive a communciation from the Legal Services Commission [LSC] on 7 August (dated 3 August) saying I should now apply for Criminal Legal Aid - and then on the very next day, 8 August, one from Carter-Ruck saying exactly the same thing. It was as if they were then 'both of one mind'.

The reversal of their decision by the LSC less than 3 weeks later reveals a combination of the complexity of the rules, and poor management by the LSC, who should have given me the correct advice when I first applied in December last year.

It's a series of human errors IMO and not conspiracy

Mr Bennett
Was not suggesting a conspiracy. but something drove CR to write to you and would seem they genuinely believed that you were entitled to criminal legal aid. what you might wish to ascertain from LSC is exactly whom made the various decisions and how they got things so badly wrong. specifics and not generalities to hide behind

by **PeterMac** 23.08.12 17:34

Tony Bennett wrote:
NOTE to aiyoyo: I think PeterMac mentioned Goerge Galloway because Galloway is on record as having written very sceptical remarks about the McCanns' account of events.

Also because he is totally independent of anyone and does not give a damn about upsetting people. Like him or loathe him, he will keep at something lie a terrier with a rat.

McCanns v Bennett: 22 August 2012 - The Legal Services Commission change their minds again, it's CIVIL Legal Aid which applies in my case, not Criminal Legal Aid [was: LSC change their minds after 8 months]...Chances of gettting Legal Aid REDUCED