[A-List] UK state: ...and justice for all?

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The character at the centre of this story has been mentioned here before.
See

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2003w07/msg00023.htm where
Patrick Bond highlights the part of his "Zimbabwe's Plunge" book which deals
in passing with Hoogstraten's role as Mugabe's chief business ally.

See also

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w48/msg00103.htm where a
brief history of Hoogstraten's conviction and possible linkage to the Wilson
plot case is discussed.

See also

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w50/msg00168.htm for
further background, which puts today's story into a startling contrast.

With the Commonwealth conference once again highlighting the controversial
position of Mugabe, and the complex geopolitics at work within Africa at
present (given the sudden realisation by the US that there's some oil
there), Mugabe's tenure looks ever more tenuous. The last thing the
Europeans want is a US intervention, thereby supplanting them. Question:
does today's story have anything to do with this? Answer: watch Mugabe's
moves very closely over the coming days and weeks.

-----

Tycoon freed after manslaughter charge is dismissed
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
The Independent, 09 December 2003

Nicholas van Hoogstraten, the property tycoon, left court yesterday a free
man after a judge ruled that he should not have to face a retrial for the
killing of a former business associate.

The 58-year-old multimillionaire was released from a cell at the Old Bailey
a year after he was convicted of the manslaughter of Mohammed Raja, 62.

Judge Sir Stephen Mitchell said last week that there was no foundation for a
manslaughter case and the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that it had no
jurisdiction to hear the prosecution's appeal. The ruling angered Mr Raja's
family who accused the Crown Prosecution Service of a "catalogue of
mistakes", and claimed Mr van Hoogstraten had got off on a technicality.
Amjad Raja, 42, one of the victim's six sons, said the family was shocked.

Mr van Hoogstraten may now consider suing for wrongful imprisonment. Last
year he was convicted of the manslaughter of Mr Raja at the Old Bailey after
being cleared of murder. He was jailed for 10 years. He won the right to a
retrial when his conviction was quashed in July by the Court of Appeal. His
lawyers had successfully argued that his conviction last year was unsafe.

Mr van Hoogstraten's defence team then argued that there was no case left
for him to answer because there was no evidence on which a jury could
convict. He could not have foreseen that the attack on Mr Raja, carried out
by his henchmen Robert Knapp and David Croke, would end in death, they said.
Croke and Knapp stabbed and shot the 62-year-old businessman at his home in
Sutton, south London, in July 1999.

Sir Stephen said last Tuesday: "If the act causing death was not foreseen,
then it was an act for which the secondary party [allegedly Hoogstraten]
could not be liable."

-----

Justice and vindication for tycoon over robbery that went horribly wrong
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
The Independent, 09 December 2003

Nicholas van Hoogstraten's short temper and ruthless business methods have
earned him a fearsome reputation. In 1968, he was sentenced to four years
jail and went to Wormwood Scrubs after hiring others to firebomb the home of
a business associate, a Jewish synagogue clergyman, who he claimed owed him
money. The judge in that trial described the young property tycoon as a
self-styled "emissary of Beelzebub".

Yesterday Mr Hoogstraten's solicitor, Robert Berg, said: "Today's judgment
brings to an end Nicholas van Hoogstraten's quest for justice and
vindication from an accusation that was based on tenuous and circumstantial
accusations."

Sir Stephen Mitchell will today formally release Mr van Hoogstraten from the
charge against him at a short hearing at the Old Bailey. Mr van Hoogstraten
has always maintained he was framed over the death of business associate
Mohammed Sabir Raja.

The prosecution had originally alleged that Mr van Hoogstraten wanted
revenge after Mr Raja began court proceedings against him alleging fraud.
Last year, the Raja family won a £5m claim against him for the alleged
fraud.

But Mr van Hoogstraten has appealed and a new hearing is due next March.

At his original trial, the tycoon alleged that another figure in the
property world, Michaal Hamdan, was instrumental in putting him in the dock.
He claimed Mr Hamdan had "harboured a serious grudge against me" ever since
they fell out over control of a South coast hotel. "It was something that
was eating away at him. He even tried to blame me for the death of his
mother," he said.

But Mr Hamdan fled to Lebanon before he was due to give evidence at the
original trial after implicating Mr van Hoogstraten in the killing of Mr
Raja. He alleged the property tycoon said he wanted to get rid of two
people - one was Raja.

But, after Mr Hamdan flew to Beirut, the judge ruled that his statements
could not be read to the jury in his absence.

During his trial, Mr van Hoogstraten said he accepted he had a volcanic
temper and had threatened to kill people. It was simply anger, he told the
court, adding: "There have been no dead bodies."

Mr Raja, 62, was stabbed five times and shot in the face at close range with
a sawn-off shotgun at his home in Sutton, south London, on the evening of 2
July 1999. Small-time thugs Robert Knapp and David Croke were jailed for
life for the murder and were later refused permission to appeal against
their convictions.

Mr van Hoogstraten denied hiring them, and his lawyer, Richard Ferguson QC,
suggested at his trial last year that the killing was more like a robbery
"gone horribly wrong" than a carefully planned hit by a powerful
businessman.

Yesterday the Crown Prosecution Service denied that its prosecutors had made
any mistakes. A spokeswoman said: "The case raised important issues of law
arising from the accepted definition of manslaughter and the application of
case law."

She said they had argued the case had constituted an offence of
manslaughter, but the defence had argued it had not.

When he was jailed for manslaughter last year Mr van Hoogstraten was
building a £40m country home on his estate in East Sussex. Earlier this
year, ramblers won a 13-year battle for the right to use a public footpath
across the estate. Mr van Hoogstraten had described the ramblers as "scum,
riff-raff and the great unwashed" for wanting to use the footpath.

His fortune, sometimes estimated at £200m, sees him regularly featured in
lists of Britain's wealthiest people. He has homes in Barbados, St Lucia,
Florida, Cannes and Zimbabwe.

His private life is closely guarded but he was born in 1946 as Nicholas
Marcel Hoogstraten in Shoreham, East Sussex. His grandfather was a major
shareholder in the British East India Company but, by the time Nicholas was
born, the family was no longer wealthy. His father worked as a shipping
agent, his mother was a housewife and he had two sisters and was educated at
a Jesuit school.

He left school at 16 and joined the Royal Navy. Just a year later, he sold
his astutely acquired stamp collection for £1,000 and embarked on a business
career, buying property in the Bahamas and then in the British housing
market.

By the time he was 22, he was reputed to have become Britain's youngest
millionaire. In the 1980s, as the housing market boomed, Mr van Hoogstraten
acquired more than 2,000 properties. By the 1990s he had sold 90 per cent of
them, making massive profits, and investing in other areas, including global
mining.