Tycoon son's legal fight over claims family firm used 'armed thugs' in roof row
The son of criminal tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten is embroiled in a court fight over a luxury flat, amid claims his family’s firm used “armed thugs” during a roof extension row.
Omani Estates Limited, a property company owned and run by Van Hoogstraten’s eldest son Max Hamilton, 38, and three of his siblings, claims it owns a loft space which Maria El Massouri extended her flat into.
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” after she applied for possession of the space, according to Mrs Massouri.
The High Court heard Mrs Massouri and her husband obtained planning permission in 2002 to build a mansard roof extension on top of their second floor flat in Chelsea, West London, in a street where properties can fetch upwards of £1million.
Omani Estates Ltd objected when she applied for adverse possession – or squatters’ rights – of the area covered by her extension for legal reasons in 2020. Backing its claim to ownership of the loft area, the company pointed to the terms of a lease made in 1996 which it bought in May 2017.
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Shazia Raja and her sister Razia (DAILY MIRROR)
Max Hamilton, son of Van Hooggstraten (DAILY MIRROR)The court heard that Omani Estates Ltd is also run by Britannia Hamilton, 33, Richmond Hamilton, 33, and Alexander Hamilton, 36 – also the children of Nicholas Adolf von Hessen, 78. He was previously Nicholas van Hoogstraten, a notorious property tycoon whose fortune was estimated at £800million in the early 2000s.
He is infamous for his treatment of tenants, who he once reportedly described as “scumbags”. He was jailed for paying a gang to throw a grenade into the Brighton house of Rabbi Bernard Braunstein, whose son owed him a debt.
Alexander Hamilton, another one of Van Hooggstraten's sons (DAILY MIRROR)Mrs Massouri also says workmen who were sent by Omani Estates Ltd entered her flat using scaffolding and installed a horizontal internal wooden barrier, blocking the stairs leading from her flat to the loft room. She is suing the company, seeking damages for trespass and for a declaration that she owns the loft space via adverse possession.
But lawyers for Omani Estates Ltd are counterclaiming, asking for an order stating that it owns the loft space and that Mrs Massouri is the “trespasser”. They also deny the company ordered “thugs” or anybody else into her flat, while admitting erecting scaffolding, removing a door and installing the wooden “partition” across the stairs.
Judge Nicholas Caddick KC reserved judgment on the case to a later date.
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