The billionaire Candy brothers faced accusations of blackmail, extortion and intimidation in the high court yesterday, as former business partners and once close advisers prepared to give evidence against them in a £132mn claim for damages.
The case, which has finally reached trial after a year of legal wrangling, is being brought by the entrepreneur Mark Holyoake, whose own reputation was dented after the collapse of his fish importing business, British Seafood, six years ago.
Christian and Nick Candy, best known as the creators of the super-luxe One Hyde Park apartment complex in London’s exclusive Knightsbridge district, are embroiled in a bitter and costly battle that has seen millions spent already on private investigators, public relations advisers and a small army of solicitors and silks.
Holyoake, a university friend of Nick Candy’s, is suing the brothers and their CPC Group property business in a dispute over a £12mn loan.
The money was provided in October 2011 to help fund his own project at Grosvenor Gardens House, a 42-apartment mansion block in London.
Opening the proceedings, Roger Stewart QC for the claimant said Holyoake was pressured into repaying £37mn and pulling out of the development, losing £100m in potential profits by selling it before completion.
In his legal claim, Holyoake alleges his business interests, his reputation, and his personal and family life were threatened in a series of exchanges.
He claims Christian Candy told him during a phone call: “You need to think about your pregnant wife,” and that he would“feel terrible if anything were to go wrong during the pregnancy for her or the baby”. The finger was also pointed at Nick Candy, who is married to the singer Holly Valance, with claims he threatened that his brother would sell the debt to “certain people, potentially Russians” who would “not think twice about hurting” Holyoake or his family.
Holyoake’s wife Emma is scheduled to give evidence over the coming weeks.
Outlining the case, Stewart claimed his client was subjected by the Candys to “a long-running, highly unpleasant and malicious campaign of threats, abuse, intimidation and coercion directed at himself and his family.
This included threats to the physical well-being of Mark Holyoake, his pregnant wife and their unborn child”. The purpose of this conspiracy, said Stewart in his opening submission, was to obtain Grosvenor Gardens House at an “undervalue” and to “extort very significant sums of money” from him.
Their actions, he said, amounted to “blackmail”. The Candys deny the charges “in their entirety”. In their defence statement they allege “serial dishonesty and fraud on the part of Holyoake and his associates” and that the Grosvenor project was developed “on dishonest foundations with other people’s money”. They say he commenced the development without any certainty on how it would be funded, that he “consistently lied about his assets”, and that he defaulted on the terms of the loan.
Individuals previously close to the Candys have come forward to join 11 witnesses prepared to take the stand in support of Holyoake.
They include the former interim chief executive of Candy & Candy, Clive Hyman, who worked for the brothers in 2005 after leaving KPMG, where he was a partner.
Also lined up is the banker William Pym, who advised Christian Candy while working at Credit Suisse, and later in his own advisory firm, and was so close to the property magnate that he attended his stag event.
Ian Roberts, founder of a high profile technology startup called Crowdmix, is to break a six-month silence over the collapse of his venture in order to give evidence.
Roberts was ousted from his company, in which Nick Candy was the largest investor, weeks before it filed for bankruptcy.
Candy then bought the venture, which was set up to create a music sharing app, out of administration.
The evidence from Roberts would support the allegations of blackmail,claimed Stewart.
“Mr Roberts will give evidence relating to Nick Candy’s involvement in Crowdmix, in particular how Nick Candy sought to obtain Crowdmix at an undervalue via unlawful means,” Stewart alleged. “Mr Roberts’s evidence will seek to show the propensity of Nick Candy to engage in the conduct that is alleged by claimants in these proceedings.”
With well-known investors ranging from the DJs Danny Rampling and Pete Tong to the Goldman Sachs investment banking boss Anthony Gutman,
Crowdmix employed 160 staff in London and Los Angeles at its peak.
It collapsed last summer in a blaze of publicity after burning through £14m without ever launching its app to the general public.
In a 103-page written submission, Stewart said the financier Jonathan Arnst would also give evidence, alleging that the brothers attempted to destabilise” Holyoake’s relationship with his employer, Investec bank.
Stewart said emails uncovered in disclosure proceedings before the trial appear to show that Christian Candy discussed “stealing” Grosvenor Gardens from Holyoake.
They suggest Candy attempted to purchase Holyoake’s loan from Investec, which had underwritten the project.
In March 2012, Christian wrote: “Once we buy this loan, we may want to call default under this loan agreement also... I think CPC can steal this site of MH [Mark Holyoake] if we are clever.”
Holyoake’s case has also drawn in the controversial private investigator Cliff Knuckey.
A former Metropolitan police detective who went on to run his own investigations firm, Knuckey was allegedly ordered by a Candy manager to obtain criminal record checks on Holyoake and an associate.