Nicholas Van Hoogstraten (born 1946) is a wealthy British businessman and property owner.
He is publically 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, 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.
