18 Charges Filed Against Chairman of Polly Peck : Conglomerates: Asil Nadir led the London-based company through a 1980s boom. But it’s in bankruptcy proceedings now.

The chairman of Polly Peck, the collapsed fruit-to-electronics conglomerate, was charged by British police Sunday with theft and false accounting.

Asil Nadir, a Turkish Cypriot-born businessman whose company was a stock market sensation of the 1980s, was formally charged after a day of questioning by detectives of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office.

Police said Nadir, arrested Saturday when he returned to Britain from Turkey, would appear before magistrates in London today on 18 counts of theft and false accounting.

London-based Polly Peck includes the U.S.-based Del Monte fresh-fruit operation and Japan’s Sansui electronics. It also has wide-ranging interests in Turkey and Cyprus.

It was Britain’s most successful stock market investment of the 1980s and brought both fame and fortune to Nadir, a high-living, self-made man from the Turkish part of Cyprus.

But the group collapsed with estimated debts of more than $2 billion after the Serious Fraud Office began probing alleged share dealing irregularities.

Detective Supt. David Staff announced the charges in a statement outside the central London police station where the Polly Peck chief was being held.

Trading in Polly Peck was suspended on the London Stock Exchange on Sept. 20, and the company was put into the hands of court-appointed administrators a month later.

Polly Peck’s creditors are owed $2.6 billion. They agreed to adjourn a bankruptcy hearing until Jan. 7.

During the previous decade Nadir transformed Polly Peck from an ailing textiles firm into a multibillion-dollar empire. A $2,000 investment in 1981 would have been worth more than $2 million in the stock’s heyday.