KEY POINTS:
He appears like a bewildered old granddad in court, wearing a buttoned-up cardigan and cupping his hand to his ear to hear the judge.
But if what British police say is true, Bryan Walter Archer is a sophisticated conman involved in a multi-million-pound conspiracy to defraud one of
their country's most powerful institutions - the Bank of England.
Archer was arrested in his hometown of Tauranga this week and is facing extradition to Britain on charges relating to an alleged £180 million ($480 million) conspiracy. Courts in Britain have heard that the con aimed to scam the bank of $75 billion.
His latest plea for bail, in the Tauranga District Court yesterday, was refused and he faces another hearing next week to decide whether extradition proceeds.
The court fears Archer will flee if bailed and wants him extradited as soon as possible.
Archer has indicated he will fight the order, despite Judge Michael Crosbie saying there is "no doubt"of the 59-year-old's involvement in a conspiracy.
British police say Archer conspired with six others - an Australian and five Chinese - to defraud the bank by presenting counterfeit bills in denominations as high as half-a-million pounds.
The group claimed the bills came from wealthy Chinese families who were issued them by the bank in exchange for gold deposits in World War II, and who now wanted to redeem the special-issue notes for modern currency.
On the face of it, the idea of a £500,000 banknote sounds far-fetched. But a banking expert testifying at the trial of Archer's six co-accused, currently appearing in a London court, said the bank did in fact issue such bills.
Investigate magazine - which is publishing a 16-page article on Archer and the alleged conspiracy in its issue due out Wednesday - also says there is more to the story than meets the eye.
In a videotaped interview it conducted with Archer after he learned he was wanted by British police, he said the bank was denying the existence of the notes because it did not want to pay, and was therefore coming down on him and his co-accused "like a sledgehammer on a mosquito". In a rambling nine-page letter obtained by the Herald, Archer proclaims his innocence to British opposition leader David Cameron, claiming he and the other accused never presented the bills as real, but asked the bank to test their authenticity. However Archer's past suggests his words should be taken with a grain of salt.
He has had many guises over the years - National Party candidate for Mangere, Tauranga District Council project manager, company director, and self-proclaimed specialist in international disaster relief.
More recently, he appeared on TV3 in a story about the Ruatoki raids, claiming that as a former hunter, he had knowledge of military-style training camps operating in the Urewera ranges 20 years ago.
Friends say he is a committed Christian, whose work centres around helping those in need, but his business dealings paint a different picture.
He has several fraud convictions, including from March this year, when he was fined $18,000 for breaching the Financial Reporting Act.
The sentencing judge said Archer persuaded people to entrust him with funds "which disappeared into one of those black holes which exist to part the foolish, or the over-kindly, or the ill-advised from their money".
In 1999, Archer and an associate established Inistyme Investments, a company which promised "high yield investments" to the public.
The firm solicited more than $1 million from individual investors and in 2004, Archer was convicted of breaching the Securities Act by offering securities without a prospectus.
The judge who sentenced him in March said the Inistyme scheme was obviously a scam, but Archer managed to persuade people to part with sums of up to six figures.
Now, he faces a lengthy prison sentence if convicted of the British conspiracy.
Bryan Archer
* Charged in the UK with conspiring to defraud the Bank of England of $480 million
* Already convicted on several fraud-related charges here
* Refused bail this week as he awaits extradition to Britain
