So serious were the problems in his administration that the British government took the unusual step of restoring direct rule to the islands, after declaring corruption to have become "endemic".

Michael Misick, centre, was arrested at a Rio de Janeiro's Airport. Photo: EPA

Then, having slipped away, Mr Misick, 47, resurfaced 18 months ago in another tropical spot famous for harbouring fugitives from Brtitish justice - the Brazilian city of Rio, where he moved into a luxury apartment near Ipanema Beach.

Unlike the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, though, who spent decades in Rio thumbing his nose at British police, Mr Misick's time on the run has proved somewhat more shortlived.

Knowing that he was in Brazil, Britain's Foreign Office moved to discreetly close a loophole in their treaty with the country that would have prevented his extradition.

In December he was arrested and put in custody. Now he faces being flown back home to the Turks and Caicos islands to go on trial after a Brazilian court refused a claim for political asylum.

Mr Misick denies the allegations, describing himself as a "political prisoner" who is being framed on false charges brought by Britain. But Brazilian police have used the occasion to put to rest the idea that their country is still a place where fugitives could rest easy.

"This arrest serves to discredit the idea that major international criminals can live peacefully and spend their dirty money in Rio," said the city's Interpol chief, Orlando Nunes.

Mr Misick made a big impact during his six-year tenure in the Turks and Caicos islands, which he ran from 2003 to 2009. He oversaw a big rise in high-end tourism on the islands, with well-heeled holidaymakers and film stars including Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis and Donna Karan attracted to its beautiful beaches and unspoiled coral atolls.

But the Misick years also had a darker side - a web of public corruption that was first highlighted by a delegation of British MPs in 2008. They decried a "a palpable climate of fear" and criticised the Foreign Office for not having intervened earlier.

When a team of British lawyers and government officials arrived to investigate, their attention was quickly drawn to Mr Misick, who had declared assets of only $50,000 when elected in 2003. Now, though, he appeared to be living the life of a multi-millionaire, with cash flowing in from a large-scale resort development, and a mansion on the islands believed to be worth $16 million.

A commission convened on the island by a former British high court judge, Sir Robin Auld, later heard allegations that Mr Misick and other ministers had financed lavish lifestyles by acquiring publicly-owned Crown land and selling it to developers.

Michael Misick with Lisa Raye McCoy in 2007. Photo: Wireimage

Some of the commision's most striking testimony to came from Mr Misicks' ex-wife Lisa Raye McCoy, an American model and sitcom actress whom he met at an awards ceremony. She claimed she was allocated up to $200,000 a month for new clothes and was paid $300,000 by the tourism board - which also came under Mr Misick's remit - to pose in a swimsuit for an advertising campaign. She also alleged that the couple maintained an $8 million mansion and jetted around the world in a private plane. The marriage later turned sour after it emerged a Rolls Royce Phantom he gave her as a birthday present turned out to be hired through her own company, leaving her liable for $6,900 in monthly rent.

The corruption scandal - the biggest in Turks and Caicos history - is believed to have left the islands, which have a population of just 31,000, on the verge of bankruptcy, with the British government forced to provide $260 million in loan guarantees.

After Sir Robin delivered a stinging interim report in 2009, Mr Misick resigned and was last seen on the islands the next year. He is initially believed to have fled to the nearby Dominican Republic, before arriving in Brazil in October 2011. Foreign Office sources said he had realised that Britain's current extradition treaty with Brazil did not include residents of territories such as the Turks and Caicos.

"It would appear he was deliberately keeping to countries from where he could not be extradited," said a Foreign Office source.

In Rio he settled in an apartment in Ipanema, the upmarket beach district made famous by the Frank Sinatra song, with a new girlfriend. With a British-led criminal investigation underway in the Turks and Caicos, his assets had already been frozen. But he still continued to live a "luxurious" life, paid for with a large number of credit cards, sources close to the British investigating team said.

"Mike has never been afraid to flash the cash – that was eventually what got him in trouble back home," said one source. "I'm told he wasn't exactly shy in Rio either."

Shortly after arriving in Brazil, Mr Misick also launched an asylum claim, only for it to be struck out in June 2012. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office had quietly extended its extradition treaty with Brazil to include citizens of the Turks and Caicos, and in December, Mr Misick was arrested and taken to Rio's notorious Ary Franco prison to await a court hearing.

The jail is considered awful, even by Brazil's standards, with a United Nations report describing it as "dark, dirty, steamy and cockroach-infested", and recommending its immediate closure.

It was from his prison cell that Mr Misick then mounted a propaganda war, writing letters that were passed to newspapers in his homeland condemning the British government and complaining that he was "perishing" in jail.

"The British should not be allowed to continue to act with impunity against leaders in colonies that seek independence or leaders that want to govern their country," he wrote. "It seems that the British way of getting rid of these leaders is to accuse them of corruption."

Curiously, his missives - written in childish scrawl - were penned on notepaper stamped with the words "Is GREAT Britain" – a slogan used by Visit Britain to promote tourism to the UK.

Mr Misick was briefly bailed in February after a mix-up meant the British government's extradition application did not reach Brazil's Supreme Court by a 60-day deadline.

But he was rearrested this month in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, and is currently being held at a police station in the city.

When he is eventually returned to his homeland – which is now back under local control after fresh elections in November – he can expect to face a trial alongside ten other defendants, mostly other state officials. He faces accusations of embezzling more than $16 million, corruption and conspiracy.

But with the slow pace of the extradition so far and the apparent determination of Misick to instruct his costly legal team to appeal at each juncture, British officials are not expecting him back in the Caribbean soon. "It could be six months, it could be 12, it could be 18," one diplomat said.

In the meantime, the former premier is languishing in a Brazilian prison cell, instead of luxuriating in a glamorous bolthole on the beach.