Tycoon asks court: Why would I order contract killing?

A property tycoon worth more than £200m dismissed claims yesterday that he ordered the contract killing of a business associate, arguing that the amount over which they had supposedly fallen out was "peanuts".

Speaking in a whisper before an Old Bailey jury, Nicholas van Hoogstraten described as "an invention, fabrication, impossibility" the suggestion that he was the mastermind behind the murder of Mohammed Sabir Raja. In the process, he gave an insight into his life of wealth, at one point telling the jury: "Whatever one has it's not enough ... Even if one has £500m, it doesn't go very far."

Mr Raja was stabbed and shot at his home in Sutton, south London, in July 1999. The prosecution says Mr van Hoog-straten, 57, of Uckfield, East Sussex, conspired with David Croke, 59, of East Moulsecoomb, Brighton, and Robert Knapp, 55, of Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, to murder Mr Raja. All three deny murder and conspiracy.

Mr van Hoogstraten, who was on his way to Gatwick airport for a visit to France at the time Mr Croke and Mr Knapp allegedly killed Mr Raja, confirmed he had been involved in litigation with Mr Raja, but said civil court cases were nothing more than an "occupational hazard" for a property developer. Mr Raja had called him a maggot and a loan shark, but there were no ill-feelings.

He told the court: "I've never been able to believe from the day this business started that this is any sort of motive against me. At any time if the dispute was causing me any concern, it would have been a case of meeting with him and sorting it. We are talking about peanuts. It was nothing. Apart from anything else, even if I had lost the civil case I would have written it off against tax." The exact amount involved in the litigation was not raised in court.

Mr van Hoogstraten said he had lent Mr Raja, also a property developer, millions of pounds over the years at lower interest rates than the banks. "I don't believe Mohammed and me ever had a cross word with each other," he added. "Hard as this may seem, my relationship with Mohammed basically stayed the same from the day I first clapped eyes on him. On occasion he would irritate me, but I never ever changed my attitude to him. You can't always choose the people you do business with."

Asked about his finances, Mr van Hoogstraten said he had property interests at home and abroad, including "seven or eight" hotels in Brighton and Hove in Sussex. They were run by property companies on his behalf. He also had an art and antiques collection housed at Hamilton Palace in Sussex, the vast mansion he had built over 25 years for about £28m."I would not call the Sussex house an investment," Mr van Hoogstraten told the jury. "It is a drain ... I live modestly." He said the mansion was intended mainly for his art collection, which he valued at £200m.

Mr van Hoogstraten's counsel, Richard Ferguson QC, said the killing had the signs of a robbery "gone horribly wrong". Mr Raja had been stabbed and shot in front of two of his sons in what was a less than precise operation.

Opening the defence, Mr Ferguson said: "Mr Van Hoogstraten is a man of means. Do you not think that if he had wanted Mohammed Raja killed, he would have had a vastly more sophisticated plan? ... This was a bungled farce, more like an attempted robbery than a contract killing. A knife and a single-barrel sawn-off shotgun are hardly the weapons of a contract killing. The raised voices, the shot through the ceiling, the moved furniture, a bag to carry out the loot ... are more suggestive, you may think, of a bungled robbery.

"The possible financial consequences of the litigation were for [Mr van Hoogstraten] trifling. As a motive for murder, this is scraping the barrel. It is an insult to your intelligence and a travesty of justice to this defendant to put him on trial for such an absurd motive," Mr Ferguson said.

Pointing to evidence on the alleged method of payment, he added: "Can you get your head round paying for a killing by instalments? Not only by instalments but paying by cheque?"

The trial continues.