Billionaire brothers, 3 mysterious deaths and a wife’s fear her husband was next . . .
THE wife of a businessman who fell out with Nick and Christian Candy feared he would be murdered after three of the brothers’ acquaintances ‘died mysteriously’, she told a court yesterday.
Emma Holyoake said she worried for her husband Mark’s safety after he became involved in a business dispute with the property developers.
Giving evidence yesterday in a legal battle over a loan between them and her husband, she said Christian Candy, 42, had threatened her unborn baby in 2012.
She said he had also reduced his 44year-old brother Nick to tears and told him he disapproved of his marriage to former Neighbours star Holly Valance.
Mrs Holyoake said her claims that her husband was at risk were not ‘outlandish’ because others in the Candys’ business circle had ‘died mysteriously’, including tycoon Paul Castle, a friend of Prince Charles, entrepreneur Scot Young and oligarch Boris Berezovsky, all of whom are thought to have committed suicide.
She told the High Court: ‘Mark experienced Christian as a volatile and dangerous man. I used to worry that Christian might take steps to hurt or even kill Mark.
‘Part of me worries they will employ similar tactics as before. I still sleep in my daughters’ room when Mark is away.’
Her fears were revealed as part of a £ 132million legal claim brought by her husband, 44, over money loaned to him by the Candys. He is also seeking damages for an alleged campaign of intimidation by them that left him fearing for his life.
He alleges he was blackmailed by them into making extortionate repayments on a loan. The Candys deny all charges.
He borrowed £12million from Christian Candy’s firm CPC in 2011 to finance a property development but pulled out, at a loss of £100million in potential profits.
He paid back more than £37million on the two-year loan, and is seeking £132million for lost profits, over-payments, legal costs and aggravated damages.
Mrs Holyoake, 44, said Nick Candy and her husband went to university together and were close. But she said Nick Candy was bullied by his younger brother, who did not get on with Miss Valance, 33. She claimed Christian Candy once said of his sister-inlaw: ‘If she sees me coming, she better f***ing cross over on to the other side of the road.’
She claimed he once left his brother weeping ‘in a foetal position on the floor’. Mrs Holyoake said the brothers were ‘so driven by the love of money they have lost all sense of decency’. Describ- ing Nick Candy as ‘ultra-materialistic, a terrible name dropper and more than a little boastful’, Mrs Holyoake said that, nonetheless, she felt he had a ‘good heart’.
But Christian Candy was ‘irrational, aggressive and threatening’, she said, and once told her husband he would ‘nuclear bomb his entire world’ and would him up in any way possible’.
Mrs Holyoake described him as ‘shy, uncomfortable in his own skin with zero social skills’ and ‘more than a little creepy’.
She said: ‘Christian will use any tactics he deems necessary to bring menace and destruction ‘f*** into our lives, even to go so far as threatening to exert so much pressure on our family that I would lose my unborn child. I also recall Mark telling me Christian threatened to take our house and throw our kids and me on to the street, that he was going to ruin us.’
Mrs Holyoake said her family Loan: Emma and Mark Holyoake at the High Court yesterday hired bodyguards in 2012 and put CCTV in their home on Ibiza.
She claimed Nick Candy said his brother would sell Mr Holyoake’s debt to people who would ‘think nothing of physically hurting Mark, myself and or the children’.
The Candys emphatically deny making threats, claiming Mr Holyoake invented them.
A spokesman said: ‘Emma Holyoake accepted in evidence that her statement is based on information provided to her by her husband, whose claims are denied in their entirety.’
The hearing continues.