Candy accuser is ‘serial’ liar, court told

The former business partner who is suing the property tycoons Nick and Christian Candy was accused on Thursday of “serial dishonesty and fraud” in pursuit of a luxury property scheme that was “always going to collapse”.

The Candys are fighting a £132m claim from Mark Holyoake in the High Court in London. Mr Holyoake claims the brothers extorted and intimidated him in an attempt to obtain one of his properties cheaply.

Mr Holyoake, once a university friend of Nick Candy, obtained a £12m loan from CPC, a company headed by Christian Candy, in order to help purchase a £42.5m property in Belgravia called Grosvenor Gardens House.

Mr Holyoake wanted to redevelop the building into luxury flats, but eventually sold the property without doing so.

Mr Holyoake says that soon after taking the loan, the brothers began threatening him in order to get their hands on the site. The Candys deny all the accusations.

Tim Lord QC, representing the defendants, on Thursday accused Mr Holyoake of “serial dishonesty and fraud” in the process of “speculating with other people’s money”.

According to documents submitted to the court, Mr Holyoake provided a sworn statement to CPC saying he was worth more than £120m, but less than 10 months earlier, in proceedings related to the collapse of British Seafood, where he had been chief executive, had said his net worth was £15m. “That he lied about his assets . . . is clearly a potential explanation,” lawyers for the Candys said.

Mr Lord said: “Mr Holyoake is a man who is on any view prepared to say different things to different people, depending whether he is trying to borrow money from them or avoid paying money back to them.”

He claimed the funds for the Grosvenor Gardens project were borrowed, including the £12m that was issued as a personal loan to Mr Holyoake.

“When you set up a project that is strained in this way, it is always going to collapse . . . Mr Holyoake was essentially speculating with other people’s money,” he said. In documents submitted to the court, lawyers for the Candys accused Mr Holyoake and his team of dangling the “sham” prospect of a sale to Middle Eastern investors.

One of Mr Holyoake’s business associates expressed concern about “constant lying” to lenders and “the fraud we have committed”, according to emails read out in court. Mr Holyoake denies any dishonesty.

A day earlier, the court had heard from Roger Stewart QC, representing Mr Holyoake, that the Candy brothers started to threaten him soon after the loan deal and he had to sign subsequent additional loan agreements; they claimed he was eventually coerced into selling the property.

According to written arguments, Mr Holyoake alleges that at a meeting in Guernsey in 2012, Christian Candy threatened to “take a wrecking ball to his life” unless he handed over the keys of the property to CPC.

The brothers are denying these claims, saying that the “most scurrilous” among them were “invented”.

Property and private equity figures including the real estate investor Nick Leslau and Kevin Dunn, UK general counsel for the private equity group 3i, were present on Thursday to watch the trial, which is scheduled to last several weeks.

The case continues.