Asil Nadir mixed with police killer Kenneth Noye
ASIL Nadir’s contacts in London featured the cream of society.
But on the run in northern Cyprus, the tycoon mixed with a different kind of celebrity, including police killer Kenneth Noye.
Nadir had lunch with Noye during a short visit to the island by the vicious gangster in the 1990s.
Noye, who stabbed an undercover detective to death in 1985, was checking out Cyprus as a future safe haven.
Spain’s Costa del Sol, the traditional bolthole for London’s underworld, was becoming less secure as the authorities clamped down on foreign criminals. Nadir’s flight to his homeland in 1993 had highlighted the lack of an extradition treaty with Britain and encouraged other villains to follow suit.
Noye had stabbed John Fordham to death in the garden of his home in Westerham, Kent, as police investigated the £26million Brink’s-Mat bullion robbery.
They had lunch together and chatted about life in Cyprus. Kenny was very taken with the place and saw it as a possible place to go if he was in trouble
He was cleared after claiming self-defence but was jailed for handling bullion from the robbery. The killer was not long out of jail when he met Nadir in Cyprus.
A source commented: “Kenny came back saying how he had simply bumped into Nadir who was one of the most-wanted men in Britain at the time.
“They had lunch together and chatted about life in Cyprus. Kenny was very taken with the place and saw it as a possible place to go if he was in trouble.”
Noye eventually chose a different bolthole when he went on the run in December 1996 after he stabbed to death Stephen Cameron, 21, in a road rage row on an M25 slip road in Swanley, Kent.
The gangster spent two years living on the Costa del Sol before he was captured and is now serving life for murder.
