Wife of businessman suing Candy brothers claims intimidation

The wife of a businessman suing the Candy brothers in the High Court wept as she listed the alleged threats made against her family by one of the brothers.

Emma Holyoake said her husband Mark had told her about the threats by Christian Candy at a time when she was “heavily pregnant”.

She claimed that Christian Candy had repeatedly threatened her husband, saying he would “nuclear bomb his entire world” and would “**** him up in any way possible”.

She added: “The one that I remember him telling me about is that Christian would put us under so much pressure as a family that I would have another miscarriage.”

“I’m not a weak woman . . . this has overshadowed all my life for the last five years, it has been hanging over me,” she said.

Ms Holyoake’s husband is suing the Candys, the property developers best known for their Number One Hyde Park scheme, for extortion and blackmail in a £132m civil case.

CPC, the company owned by Christian Candy, is also a defendant.

Mr Holyoake alleges that he approached Nick Candy, who he knew from university days, for a £12m loan in order to develop Grosvenor Gardens House, a property he bought for £42.5m in October 2011.

He later signed a loan agreement with CPC but claims he was then intimidated into signing further loan agreements by the Candy brothers and eventually into selling the property without redeveloping it.

The Holyoakes hired security guards in 2012 and have cameras installed in their children’s bedrooms and around their home in Ibiza. “We still have this close protection and I take — and have taken considerable comfort from it,” she said.

Ms Holyoake added in her witness statement: “I used to worry constantly that Christian might take steps to hurt or even kill Mark when Mark travelled on business” and said there are men “in the Candys’ extended circle who have died mysteriously”, naming Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, and Scot Young, the property developer.

The Candy brothers deny Mr Holyoake’s claims in their entirety.

Tim Lord QC, representing the Candy brothers, cross-examined Ms Holyoake over why her husband had not told police about the alleged threats to their family.

“You do not have first-hand evidence of any threats by these defendants,” Mr Lord put to her. “All the information has been conveyed to you by your husband,” he added.

“We live in Ibiza and there is a very, very minimal police force in Ibiza,” Ms Holyoake replied.

Earlier on Tuesday Clive Hyman, a former KPMG partner who was interim chief executive with Candy and Candy for four months in 2005, gave evidence to the trial.

In his witness statement, he said: “The brothers used to joke in my presence and that of the senior management team that no one would ever understand their tax affairs. This is partly because nothing was ever written down. They believed that if nothing was written down nothing about their tax affairs could ever be found out.”

However, Thomas Plewman QC, representing the Candy brothers, put to him in cross examination that his evidence “lacks a factual foundation” as Mr Hyman did not deal with tax issues and he was “wrong”.

Mr Hyman told the court that the brothers’ relationship with their staff was “fraught with difficulties”. They “regularly reduced their personal assistants to tears”, he said. Nick Candy was “particularly brutal in his criticism” and when one PA made a minor mistake “he publicly threatened to ‘cut off your tits’,” according to the witness statement.

“I formed the view during my time at the company that the brothers had no normal, ethical concepts of right or wrong,” Mr Hyman added in his witness statement.

Mr Plewman, cross examining Mr Hyman, accused him of including “scurrilous allegations in your witness statement” in a “grubby and shameful attempt to muck rake”.

In a statement the Candy brothers said: “Emma Holyoake has accepted in evidence that her statement is based on information provided to her by her husband whose claims are denied in their entirety. The statement has the sole purpose of causing reputational damage to the defendants.

“The defendants remain committed to having these matters decided at trial by the judge.” they added.

The trial continues.