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  • Also see: http://www.nicholasvanhoogstraten.com/ Nicholas Van Hoogstraten (born 1946) is a wealthy British businessman and property owner. He is publicly outspoken and often unpopular, codemning his tenants as "scum" and engaging in a long running feud with the Ramblers' Association. He has acted criminally at times in his business career, serving time in prison for organising a grenade attack on a debtor's home and for manslaughter. He was born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten in Shoreham-by-Sea, the son of a shipping agent. He was educated at a local Jesuit school. He left school in 1962 and joined the Royal Navy for a year. He started his property business in Bermuda using a stamp collection as initial finance. He moved into Britain in the early 1960s with purchases in London and Brighton. By 1968 he was reportedly Britain's youngest millionaire with a portfolio of over 300 properties, despite serving four years in prison. By 1980 he owned over 2,00 properties. As the housing market boomed into the early 1990s and prompted by a spat with the Inland Revenue he sold the majority of his housing, investing in other fields outside Britain, including mining interests in Nigeria and later Zimbabwe. He is building a home, Hamilton Palace, near Uckfield in East Sussex. Construction of the neo-classical building began in 1985 and cost around £35 million up to 2002. The enormous edifice is intended to house his collection of art and also includes his mausoleum. In July 2002 he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for manslaughter. A former business associate of his, Mohammed Raja, had been shot and stabbed in 1999. Raja had been in the process of suing Van Hoogstraten for fraud when he was killed. Evidence pointed to the two murderers being hired by Van Hoogstraten. He was found not guilty of murder but was convicted of manslaughter. He was given leave to appeal in February 2003 and the conviction was overturned in July 2003 at the Court of Appeal, due to a technical flaw in jury instructions in the Old Bailey trial. He has five children, from three different mothers. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Van_Hoogstraten
  • Nicholas Van Hoogstraten was not born in 1946. He was born on 27th February, 1945. Van Hoogstraten's father, Charles Hoogstraten, was not a shipping agent, he was a senior wine steward on the SS Andes, a cruise-liner which plied the route from London to Buenos Aires. Charles Hoogstraten was born in India, and worked in a Paris hotel during the 1930s. On the outbreak of war, he came to the UK, settled in Rustington, West Sussex, and initially did war work, later joining the British Army. The Hoogstraten family originated in Belgium. There is a chateau called "Hoogstraten" halfway between Antwerp and the Dutch border. Nicholas Van Hoogstraten was never in the Royal Navy. From the ages of 15 to 18, he was a cabin boy on the SS Andes, a job obtained for him by his father in order to keep him out of trouble back home in Littlehampton. The most comprehensive source of information about Nicholas Van Hoogstraten is the book, "Nicholas Van Hoogstraten: Millionaire Killer", by Mike Walsh and Don Jordan. Of course, the book was published before Van Hoogstraten was cleared of manslaughter. So he is still a "millionaire", but no longer a "killer". Balkiadin
  • Oy vey,my life already, Mossad will finish off this horrible man. Such an idiot

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