The financial director of businessman Mark Holyoake’s company Hotblack told a London court that he altered documents that he provided to property investor Christian Candy’s company CPC Group.
Holyoake is suing Nick and Christian Candy for more than £100m, claiming they “coerced” him out of millions of pounds after they lent him £12m to buy Belgravia mansion Grosvenor Gardens House in late 2011 and subjected him to a campaign of threats and intimidation.
The Candy brothers strongly refute the allegations. They claim that Holyoake was an unreliable creditor who lied to them from the start and that his allegations of coercion are fabricated.
Under cross-examination today from Thomas Plewman QC, one of the Candy’s barristers, Hotblack FD David Wells said that he deliberately altered documents that he provided to CPC during negotiations over the loan repayment to remove any reference to what was referred to in court as the “Oscar 1” loan.
He said he did this because he and Mark Holyoake were worried that if the Candy brothers discovered the identity of their other creditors, they would contact them and try to “wreck” the Grosvenor Gardens House deal.
Plewman put it to him that “you deliberately falsified documents” .
“That is correct” Wells said. “It is not something we would usually do”. He said it was justified under the circumstances.
He also agreed that he prepared a document using Credit Suisse’s crest on the notepaper that appeared to show that £13.5m had been paid into Hotblack’s accounts, even though the money hadn’t yet been paid. The document was created to show that the company was in a position to pay off the CPC loan.
“We felt we were justified”, Wells said. “It showed we were expecting £13.5m in.”
