'$3bn man' extradited to US

Documents were found burning at Frankel's mansion

Martin Frankel, the fugitive American financier who became known as the $3bn man, has been extradited back to the US where he faces trial for fraud.

Police said Mr Frankel was put on a flight from Frankfurt to New York.

The trader, originally from Toledo, Ohio, is accused of cheating insurance companies in five US states and embezzling at least $200m out of his clients.

His alleged crimes sparked an international manhunt, with numerous sightings around the world, until the FBI finally caught up with him two years ago.

Frankel: his arrest sparked an international manhunt

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

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 to 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.