Nicholas van Hoogstraten

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Nicholas van Hoogstraten bigraphy, stories - British businessman

Nicholas van Hoogstraten : biography

25 February 1945 –

Nicholas van Hoogstraten (born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten;Emma Brockes . The Guardian 8 September 2000 25 February 1945) is a self-made British businessman and real estate magnate. Van Hoogstraten is known for his business empire as well as his controversial life story: in 1968, he was convicted and sent to prison for paying a gang to attack a business associate. In 2002, he was sentenced to 10 years for the manslaughter of a business rival; the verdict was overturned on appeal and he was subsequently released, but in 2005 he was ordered to pay the victim’s family £6 million in a civil case.

He has been estimated to be worth £500 million, although he claims his assets in the UK have all been placed in the names of his children. His assets in property and farming in Zimbabwe alone are estimated to be worth over £200 million.

Life

Born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, the working-class son of Catholic parents, a shipping agent and a housewife. His mother was of German and English heritage, his father was of Dutch and French descent. He was educated at a local Jesuit school, but is also known to have attended Blessed Robert Southwell Catholic School in Goring-by-Sea, now known as Chatsmore Catholic High School. He left school in 1962 aged 17 and joined the merchant navy for a year. He began his property business in the Bahamas with an initial investment of £1,000 realised from the sale of his stamp collection.

Hoogstraten subsequently returned to Great Britain later in the 1960s and made property purchases in London and Brighton & Hove. By 1968 (aged 23) he was Britain’s youngest millionaire with a portfolio of over 300 properties, but the same year he began serving a four-year sentence in prison for paying a gang to throw a grenade into the house of Bernard Braunstein, a Brighton synagogue rabbi.http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/152184/The-maniac-in-the-mink.html Braunstein’’s son David, 20, allegedly owed van Hoogstraten £2,000 over a failed textile business (adjusted for inflation the figure would be much higher as "you could buy a house for that much"). At the trial the judge described Hoogstraten as "a sort of self-imagined devil who thinks he is an emissary of Beelzebub.", The Scotsman, 23 July 2002

He has said of the incident: "It seems a bit distasteful to me now, but back then when I was young… these weren’t anarchists, they were businessmen, respectable people." He was also jailed on eight counts of handling stolen goods and in 1972, was given a further 15 months for bribing prison officers to smuggle him luxuries. “I ran Wormwood Scrubs when I was in there,” he has said. By 1980, aged 35, he owned over 2,000 properties. He later sold the majority of his housing, investing in other fields outside Britain, chiefly mining and farming interests in Nigeria and later Zimbabwe. He is frequently interviewed in Courtlands Hotel, Hove, with which he has "close connections", but which is legally owned by his children., theargus.co.uk (12 December 2003)

He was fined £1,500 in 2001 for contempt of court after telling the opposing counsel: "You dirty bastard… in due course, you are going to have it."

Mohammed Raja case

In July 2002, van Hoogstraten was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of Mohammed Raja, after being found not guilty of murder: a jury at the Old Bailey decided that "although he wanted Mr Raja harmed, he had not wanted him murdered". (22 July 2002). BBC News. Retrieved on 2008-01-26. This conviction was quashed in July 2004 by Judge Sir Stephen Mitchell who agreed that "there was no foundation for a manslaughter case." (8 December 2003). BBC News. Retrieved on 2008-01-26. On 19 December 2005 the family of Raja, in a civil action against van Hoogstraten, were awarded £6 million by Mr Justice Lightman, after the court found that the balance of probabilities was "that the recruitment of the two thugs was for the purpose of murdering Mr Raja and not merely frightening or hurting him". (19 December 2005). BBC News. Retrieved on 2007-01-26. Van Hoogstraten is not held to be guilty of Mr Raja’s murder or manslaughter under British criminal law: this requires proof beyond reasonable doubt rather than on balance of probabilities. Van Hoogstraten is alleged to have told the BBC that Mr Raja’s family "will never get a penny". (2 February 2006). BBC News. Retrieved on 2008-01-26. Van Hoogstraten explained to The Sunday Times that he had "no assets at all now in the UK," having placed those assets in the names of the five children he has fathered with a series of black African girlfriends."Jane Kelly meets Nicholas van Hoogstraten", Sunday Times, 8 January 2006