A property tycoon has denied arranging the murder of a business associate he was in dispute with - claiming the money involved was "peanuts".

Nicholas van Hoogstraten, a multi-millionaire, told the Old Bailey on Monday he did not 'mastermind' the contract killing of retired businessman Mohammed Sabir Raja.

The 62-year-old was stabbed and shot at his home in Sutton, Surrey, on 2 July 1999.

We are talking about peanuts... I would have written it off against tax

Nicholas van Hoogstraten

The prosecution alleges Mr van Hoogstraten, 57, hired two contract killers to carry out the assassination after they fell out over business debts.

Mr Raja had started civil proceedings against Mr Hoogstraten alleging fraud.

But in the witness box on the 36th day of the trial, Mr van Hoogstraten told the jury he was baffled by suggestions their dispute could have formed the basis of a murder charge.

'Occupational hazard'

He said civil litigation was an "occupational hazard" of property dealing and described the fraud case brought against him by Mr Raja as "laughable".

"It's an invention, absolute fabrication, it's an impossibility," he said.

"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."

At times barely audible to the packed court, he said he had spent 17 years and �28m completing Hamilton Palace, in East Sussex, an estate to house his �200m art collection.

Earlier, Richard Ferguson, opening the case for the defence, said the attack appeared more a "bungled robbery" than a contract killing.

Cheque payments

"Mr van Hoogstraten is a man of means," he told the court.

"Do you not think that if he had wanted Mr 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.

"There was no mastermind. There was no contract."

He also brushed aside suggestions that Mr van Hoogstraten had wanted Mr Raja killed because of litigation between them.

Brutal murder

"The possible financial consequences of the litigation were for him trifling," he added.

"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."

He asked the jury to consider some aspects of the case to see if they rang true.

He said: "Can you get your head round paying for a killing by instalments. Not only by instalments but paying by cheque?"

The key to the killing could lie with another business contact of the dead man who had more reason to want him dead, suggested Mr Ferguson.

Mr van Hoogstraten has always maintained his innocence of Mr Raja's murder, stressing that he was abroad at the time of the crime.

The businessman, of Framfield, Uckfield, also denies conspiring with David Croke, 59, of East Moulsecoomb, Brighton, and Robert Knapp, 55, of Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, and others to murder Mr Raja between 1 January and 3 July 1999.

Mr Croke and Mr Knapp deny murdering Mr Raja.