Notorious property tycoon’s son ‘sent armed thugs to burgle Chelsea flat’

Max Hamilton and his father, the property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten

The son of Nicholas van Hoogstraten, the notorious property tycoon, sent “armed thugs” to burgle a woman’s flat during a dispute over a loft conversion, London’s High Court heard.

Maria El Massouri claimed Max Hamilton, who runs Omani Estates Limited with his three siblings, “repeatedly arranged” for agents to smash security cameras at her home in Chelsea and take away her front door.

Workmen sent by the company also entered the building using scaffolding and installed a horizontal internal wooden barrier, blocking the stairs leading from her flat to the loft room, the court heard.

Mrs Massouri is suing the company for trespass, claiming she owns the loft space via adverse possession, also known as “squatter’s rights”.

However, Omani Estates is countersuing, alleging she is “the trespasser” and is seeking an order proving it owns the loft space.

The Chelsea flat that Max Hamilton is accused of arranging to have damaged – Tim Knowles

Omani Estates is run by Britannia Hamilton, 33, Richmond Hamilton, 33, Alexander Hamilton, 36, and eldest son Max Hamilton, 38.

Their father is Nicholas Adolf von Hessen, 78, previously Nicholas van Hoogstraten, a notorious property tycoon and landlord whose fortune was estimated at £800 million in the early 2000s.

He is infamous for his treatment of tenants, whom he once reportedly described as “scumbags”, and has served jail time, including for paying a gang to throw a grenade into the Brighton house of Rabbi Bernard Braunstein, whose son owed him a debt.

Van Hoogstraten was previously described in another court hearing as a “self-imagined devil who likes to think of himself as an emissary of Beelzebub”.

He was jailed in 2002 for the manslaughter of former business partner Mohammed Raja, who was shot and stabbed on his London doorstep in 1999.

Van Hoogstraten was released a year later when the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction, but was subsequently sued in a civil court and ordered to pay £6 million to Mr Raja’s family.

Maria El Massouri outside the High Court – Champion News Service Ltd

Hugh Jackson, representing Mrs Massouri, told Judge Nicholas Caddick KC that in 2002 she and her husband, who died in 2013, built a mansard roof extension on top of their second-floor flat, having obtained planning permission and the consent of the freeholder of the building at the time.

The couple later became aware that there might be another lease on the area into which they had extended, but could not track down its owner and concluded that he “may not exist”.

In 2020, Mrs Massouri applied for adverse possession – or squatter’s rights – over the area covered by her extension, attempting to bring it inside the legal footprint of her flat.

It was then that Omani Estates raised its first “complaint” about the extension – 18 years after it was completed – alleging that it was a trespass on its property.

Backing its claim to ownership of the loft area, the company pointed to the terms of a lease which was made in 1996 and subsequently bought by the company in May 2017.

‘Smash security cameras’

Mr Jackson told the judge that, since the row erupted, “it became necessary for Ms Massouri to seek, ex parte, an injunction to restrain Omani Estates Ltd after the company repeatedly arranged for agents to burgle her flat, removing its front door… and later for armed thugs to smash security cameras from its walls.

“Later still, the defendant had arranged for contractors to erect scaffolding to the rear of the building on top of the rear extension forming part of the garden flat, and to enter the mansard accommodation, breaking the balusters in the stairs to the mansard… and installing a horizontal partition on blocks, separating the mansard from the part originally leased to the claimant and her late husband.”

The company counterclaims for a declaration that it owns the space and an order forcing Mrs Massouri to give up possession of it.

Giving evidence, Max Hamilton told the judge that Mrs Massouri and her late husband “don’t own” the loft space into which they built their extension.

He denied that anyone on behalf of the company instructed anybody to enter or “burgle” Mrs Massouri’s property.

Regarding the alleged intrusions into Mrs Massouri’s flat – which she currently rents out – the company’s lawyers say removal of the door was necessary, since it was a “nuisance and/or trespass which the defendant was entitled to remedy.”

Judge Caddick reserved his judgment on the case, to be delivered at a later date.

%n

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day’s agenda from The Telegraph – direct to your inbox seven days a week.