The fraud trial of Asil Nadir, the former Polly Peck tycoon, is to take place in January, 16 months after he returned to Britain vowing to clear his name.
An Old Bailey judge said yesterday that the complex trial, which will focus on the running of the FTSE-listed Polly Peck business empire in the 1980s boom years, could last for up to four months.
Mr Nadir, 69, was in court as Mr Justice Holroyde outlined a timetable for submission of documents and pre-trial review hearings in advance of the full trial.
The businessman was originally charged by the Serious Fraud Office with theft and false accounting in 1990 after raids on his offices and the collapse of the £1.7 billion Polly Peck International.
After lengthy legal proceedings the case was set to go to trial at the Old Bailey in September 1993. But four months before it opened Mr Nadir fled Britain in a light aircraft and spent most of the next 17 years in self-imposed exile in his native North Cyprus.
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From his home there he continued to protest his innocence vigorously, but the SFO could not seek his extradition because Britain does not recognise the Turkish-backed regime in the north of the partitioned island.
Mr Nadir told The Times last year that he was prepared to return to Britain to defend his case if he was granted bail. The interview sparked a chain of events, with Richard Alderman, director of the SFO, saying that he would not oppose bail and a judge setting strict conditions for Mr Nadir’s return.
He flew back to Britain in a blaze of publicity in August last year aboard a Turkish aircraft lent him by a business associate and friend.
Since then the tycoon, who gave an estimated £500,000 to the Conservative Party in the 1980s, has been living in Mayfair with his wife Nur, 27, who was at court with him yesterday. He spends the working week at the offices of his lawyers, studying papers and preparing the defence case.
Mr Nadir has surrendered his passports and his bail conditions include a £250,000 surety, weekly reporting to a police station, a night-time curfew and the wearing of an electronic tag. He is due to return to court in November for a two-day pre-trial hearing.
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