Lawsuit gives rare glimpse into billionaire Candy brothers’ world

It is a bitter High Court battle that has given a rare glimpse of the world of the super-rich Candy brothers and the trappings of luxury homes, multimillion pound gifts, private yachts and celebrity friends.

But as the case enters its final bruising rounds this week, it is clear that the reputations of Nick and Christian Candy and the man who is suing them for £132m, one-time business associate Mark Holyoake, are firmly on the line.

As Nick Candy told the trial judge last month: “For the rest of my life. whatever happens, people are going to think — even if you find us completely innocent . . . there is going to be a slight smell, yes?”

The Candy brothers have been in the media eye as developers of ultra-luxury properties including London’s One Hyde Park, where one flat was sold to a Ukrainian billionaire for a record £136m.

The civil trial has heard of their sprawling network of connections — from John Yates, ex-assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard to Simon Cowell and Katy Perry, who was paid £1.2m to sing at Nick Candy’s lavish Los Angeles wedding.

There was even a link between a Candy business associate and the shadowy espionage world of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who was murdered in 2006 with radioactive Polonium 210.

Ostensibly the lawsuit is about a loan, but the case has also lifted the lid on how the Candys allegedly do business.

Mr Holyoake claims the brothers used threats against him and his family to extort £37m of repayments on a £12m loan. The allegations against the Candys include blackmail, conspiracy, duress, extortion and intimidation. They deny all of these claims.

Nick Candy and Mr Holyoake had been good friends and he persuaded Christian Candy to lend £12m to Mr Holyoake in 2011. This was to help him buy and re-develop Grosvenor Gardens House in Belgravia for £42.5m.

Mr Holyoake claims that soon afterwards the Candy brothers began to “extort very significant sums of money” from him by making him sign new loan agreements. He alleges that Christian Candy told him he would “take a wrecking ball” to his life and “nuclear bomb” his world.

He also claims that Nick Candy threatened that his brother would sell the loan to Russian debt collectors who “would not think twice” about “seriously ****ing hurting you” and that Christian Candy in a phone call told him “you need to think about your pregnant wife”.

The Candy brothers, for their part, accuse Mr Holyoake of making “fantastical and spiteful allegations” to hurt their business affairs and personal lives.

Some of the most eye-catching allegations in the trial came from Mr Holyoake’s wife Emma, who runs an orange farm in Ibiza. Pregnant at the time of the events, Mrs Holyoake testified she was so scared by the alleged threats that she and her husband hired security guards to protect the property, who still patrol there today.

Her witness statement painted a less than flattering picture of the Candy brothers. She claimed Nick Candy’s wife Holly confided to her that Christian “bullied” and was “controlling” of his older brother and that Nick was supposedly so upset by his brother’s behaviour that on one occasion he lay crying in a “foetal position” on a hotel floor.

“Nick has financial Tourette’s. It is impossible for him to walk into a room and say: Hi, my name is Nick. It has to be: I’m Nick and I’m a billionaire. I own this, I own that,” Mrs Holyoake claimed in her witness statement.

The Candys flatly deny any threats were made to the Holyoakes. Christian testified that he applied “legitimate, legal contractual pressure” to recover the debt. “I am a businessman and I am a hard negotiator when I need to be, but I would never resort to threats or illegal acts in order to complete a transaction,” he told the court.

Likewise Nick Candy said he had “never threatened Mark in his life with any physical violence”. He added: “Has there been commercial pressure? 100 per cent, yes. Has there been any physical threats? Absolutely no, under any circumstances.”

The trial has also led to scrutiny about the tax affairs of the Candys, who were once tax exiles in Monaco.

Mrs Holyoake said Nick Candy had told her “a hundred times” that he was a joint owner of CPC, Christian’s property development business, which was worth between £750m and £1.2bn in 2011.

Both brothers deny this. Christian Candy told the court that Nick has never been “an owner, director or shadow director of CPC”.

The question is significant because if Nick were a co-owner of CPC, the court has been told that “enormous sums” of UK tax would have been evaded.

An array of witnesses have filed into court to testify for both sides.

Clive Hyman, an ex-KPMG partner who worked briefly for the Candys, testified that the brothers “were different from other human beings that I know”. He claimed they regularly made their personal assistants cry and they had fired an executive, Philip Davis, who had multiple sclerosis.

Nick Candy denied these claims saying they made him feel “absolutely sick”. He said Mr Davies left on friendly terms and was recently in touch wanting him to pass on a tape of songs to Simon Cowell.

The court also heard evidence from Stephen Smith, a longstanding business associate of the Candys, who is an ex-director of RISC, a private detective agency that paid money to Litvinenko.

Christian Candy was questioned in the trial about his use of Cliff Knuckey, a former RISC private detective and ex-head of anti-money laundering at Scotland Yard, whom the court heard was commissioned to do a criminal records check on Mr Holyoake.

From the witness box, the Candys have turned their fire on Mr Holyoake calling him a “pathological liar” and accusing him of “serial dishonesty and fraud” and pointing to the collapse of Mr Holyoake’s British Seafood company with debts of £250m.

Three of his witnesses in the case said Mr Holyoake had pledged them a share of any winnings, putting their credibility in doubt.

After closing arguments finish this week, the only judgment that will matter is that of the trial judge Sir Christopher Nugee.

Both Candys now say they are unlikely to lend money again to friends. Nick Candy said: “Mark Holyoake is a very, very charismatic man. But I regret the day I ever met that man. It has been the worst decision of my life, OK, by a long, long way.”