KEY POINTS:
A semi-retired New Zealand company director wanted by British police for alleged involvement in a huge counterfeit plot plans to apply for bail today.
Bryan Walter Archer, 59, is to appear in the Tauranga District Court this morning after a London court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of conspiring to defraud the Bank of England.
New Zealand police have endorsed an extradition order and plan to oppose his application for bail.
Archer is one of seven people accused of conspiring to defraud the bank by claiming to have stockpiles of early 20th century bank notes - in denominations as high as £500,000 - that they wanted to exchange for current currency.
The other six accused, one an Australian and the remaining five Chinese, are now on trial in England's Southwark Crown Court.
Prosecutors allege the group devised a scam whereby they presented counterfeit notes to the bank, claiming they were rare cash that six Chinese people aged between 109 and 116 had been hoarding since pre-Communist days.
Among the fortune the group claimed to have were hundreds of special-issue £500,000 pound notes, when in fact no such notes ever existed - arousing bank staff's suspicion.
The other accused were arrested in February and March and only Archer was on the run, until his arrest in Tauranga yesterday morning.
