NICHOLAS van Hoogstraten, the notorious property baron, walked free from court yesterday after a judge ruled there was no foundation for his manslaughter conviction for killing a business rival.
Hoogstraten had served a year of a ten-year sentence after he was convicted of the manslaughter of Mohammed Raja. Mr Raja’s son Amjad, 42, said his family was shocked by the decision and called for an investigation.
The property baron was freed a
fter winning a lengthy legal battle to clear his name. He won a retrial last year because of a "flawed" direction to the jury by the original trial judge and then went on to have the case against him thrown out completely.
Yesterday, Hoogstraten left the Old Bailey protesting his innocence. He was congratulated by his legal team and kissed and hugged friends who greeted him.
His solicitor, Robert Berg, said Hoogstraten would make a personal statement tomorrow after he returns to court to be formally cleared.
The man once described as Britain’s youngest millionaire may now consider suing for wrongful imprisonment after a case which is estimated to have cost up to £10 million.
Hoogstraten, 58, from Uckfield, East Sussex, was found not guilty at the Old Bailey last year of murder but was convicted of the manslaughter of Mr Raja. He won a retrial when his conviction was quashed in July by the Court of Appeal.
His lawyers had successfully argued that Hoogstraten’s conviction was unsafe after a "flawed" direction to the jury by the trial judge.
Hoogstraten’s defence team went on to argue that there was no case left for him to answer. It had, they said, no basis in law and there was a complete lack of evidence on which a jury could convict on manslaughter. He could not have foreseen that the attack on Mr Raja - carried out by his henchmen, Robert Knapp and David Croke - would inevitably end in death, they asserted.
Croke and Knapp had stabbed and shot Mr Raja, 62, a businessman, at point-blank range at his home in Sutton, south London, in July 1999. They were jailed for life for murder.
At yesterday’s hearing, Judge Sir Stephen Mitchell agreed with Hoogstraten’s counsel, Geoffrey Cox, QC, that there was no foundation for a manslaughter case against Hoogstraten, who has always maintained he was framed over the death of Mr Raja.
He was freed on bail to return today to have the case against him formally thrown out by Judge Mitchell.
At his original trial, Hoogstraten alleged that another figure in the property world, Michael Hamdan, was instrumental in putting him in 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.
Mr Hamdan fled to the Lebanon before he was due to give evidence at Hoogstraten’s original trial. He had implicated Hoogstraten in the killing of Mr Raja, alleging that he had said he wanted to get rid of two people - one of whom was Mr Raja.
After Mr Hamdan flew to Beirut, the judge ruled that his statements could not be read to the jury in his absence.
But Hoogstraten maintained that Mr Hamdan had tried to frame him in order to save his own skin.
He alleged that his rival had a motive for getting rid of Raja because of a dispute over a property in Hove.
"The person who wanted Mr Raja got rid of was Mr Hamdan," he said.
He also alleged that Mr Hamdan was looking for immunity from prosecution and payment for not giving evidence.
Hoogstraten accepted during his trial that he had a volcanic temper and had in the past threatened to kill people.
It was simply anger, he told the court, adding: "There have been no dead bodies".
Mr Raja was stabbed five times and then shot in the face at close range with a sawn-off shotgun at his home in Sutton, south London, on the evening of July 2, 1999.
In a statement yesterday, Amjad Raja said: "Our family have now been deprived of an opportunity to have the case heard by a jury on what we see as a legal technicality."
Knapp and Croke were both jailed for life for the murder and were later refused permission to appeal against their convictions.
Knapp, 56, of Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, and Croke, 60, of East Moulescoomb, Brighton, East Sussex, were convicted unanimously by an Old Bailey jury.
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 businessman.
He said: "Mr van Hoogstraten is a man of means. Do you not think that if he had wanted Mohammed Raja killed, he would have had a vastly more sophisticated plan?"
