Every business Nielsen touched was left in ruin

Danish Jan Bonde Nielsen started off his business encounters as co-founder of a company named DCK Ltd of which he was the daily manager and chief executive.

The company was in flower growing delivering cuttings to markets throughout Western Europe.

The production was moved to Sardinia, an autonomous island region of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea.

In the late sixties, documents show that DCK entered into an agreement with the Government of Kenya to grow chrysanthemum to be exported to Western Europe and the company rapidly started acquiring real estate and land in the country.

In 1974, the DCK group consisted of companies operating in Switzerland, Germany, England and Denmark and in Kenya.

The group employed thousands of workers. The growth was mainly funded by English, German and Swiss banks.

DCK collapsed in 1975 with debts running to 100 million Danish kroners, which was largely unsecured loans and the management was blamed for the unexplained losses and accused of irresponsibility by a Danish task force that investigated the collapse.

In 1980, Mr Nielsen was charged with fraud by the Danish police in connection with the management of DCK group but the charges were withdrawn on September 1, 1980.

In 1974, Mr Nielsen had acquired control of Danish shipyard Burmeister & Wain, which was then considered one of the major industrial players in that country.

Mr Nielsen was CEO from 1976 to 1979.

The company then went down in 1980.

Mr Bonde Nielsen was declared bankrupt same year.

A warrant for his arrest was issued but at the time, he had moved to London.

Extradition proceedings failed because the crimes he was wanted for in Denmark were not considered crimes in the UK at the time.