Property developer Mark Holyoake was subjected to a “malicious campaign of threats, abuse, intimidation and coercion” at the hands of Nick and Christian Candy, lawyers for Holyoake told the High Court in London today.
Today is the first day of a hotly anticipated trial brought by Holyoake against property developers, the Candy Brothers. Holyoake is suing them for more than £100m.
“This is not an entirely usual dispute,” Holyoake’s lawyer Roger Stewart told the court this morning. “Each side makes serious and grave allegations against the other.”
At the heart of the case, Stewart said, is a loan of £12m that Candy-controlled CPC made to Holyoake in October 2011. Holyoake used the loan to buy a “substantial and valuable property” in Grosvenor Gardens in London’s Belgravia.
The interest rate on the loan was 20% with a term of two years, Stewart said, but by the time Holyoake had settled his debt with CPC in February 2014, he had paid £37m, Stewart said. This was because of a number of “agreements” Holyoake entered into.
“We make a complaint,” about those agreements, Stewart said. He alleges that Holyoake only entered into the series of agreements that escalated the value of the loan because he was “coerced” by the Candy brothers.
Holyoake “entered into these agreements as a result of improper pressure put on him by the defendants”, he said. “The rates of return that the defendants received were extraordinary,” he said. It was “more than just the rough and tumble of commercial life”.
Holyoake is due to enter the witness box tomorrow to be cross-examined on his allegations. He is expected to be on the stand for more than a week.
The Candy brothers assert that they did nothing wrong. “Mr Holyoake’s claims are denied in their entirety,” their spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. “These matters should, and will be determined on the evidence at trial by the judge.”
Their legal team will argue that Holyoake’s allegations distort the truth.
“The claimants characterise the case as starting from a £12m loan that yielded excessive returns. That is a distortion,” the brothers’ legal team wrote in their skeleton argument, which was released today.
“The transaction involved a loan to Mr Holyoake, but was in effect unsecured capital for a project that CPC had already rejected… the returns were commensurate with the associated risks.”
