'$3bn man' to be extradited to US

Documents were found burning at his mansion

He became known as the $3bn man.

Now Martin Frankel, the fugitive US financier who allegedly embezzled some $200m out of his clients and has been jailed in Germany since 1999, is to be extradited back to America.

The trader, a native of Toledo, Ohio, is accused of cheating insurance companies in five US states.

His alleged crimes sparked an international manhunt, with numerous sitings around the world, until the FBI finally caught up with him in September 1999.

Frankel: his arrest sparked an international manhunt

New escape attempt

It has since emerged that on Tuesday night, Mr Frankel made an new escape attempt, trying to chisel through the bars of his cell in Hamburg prison.

But this is unlikely to affect the extradition.

Hamburg authorities have confirmed he is to leave the jail on Friday.

"All the legal conditions are now in place," said a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office.

"We do not rule out further [escape] attempts. We want to make sure we get him back [to the United States] nice and cleanly," he added.

On the run

Mr Frankel faces 36 counts of money laundering, securities fraud, racketeering, conspiracy and other crimes.

He was arrested in September 1999, after German police and the FBI finally tracked him down at his Hamburg hotel.

He had been on the run for four months, after vanishing from his home, having apparently called the emergency services to put out a fire.

Among the papers seized after the fire was a handwritten list of tasks, the first of which was "Launder money".

Mr Frankel was sentenced in Germany for three years in jail for evading tax on imported diamonds and for possessing nine passports.

Bogus investments

US insurance company regulators said that Mr Frankel's unlicenced brokerage, Liberty National Securities, had siphoned off money from firms in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas.

These companies were placed in receivership when they could not account for assets invested with Mr Frankel.

The trader allegedly used bogus American, Caribbean and Swiss bank accounts to divert money which he was supposedly investing.

In 1992 he was banned for life from securities trading after complaints that $1m had gone missing from a fund that he ran.