A property tycoon accused of arranging the murder of a business associate once told a reporter he was "probably violent," a court has heard.

Nicholas van Hoogstraten also told how he beat up an accountant who owed him money.

And he was also once convicted for assaulting a bailiff, the jury at the Old Bailey was told on Tuesday.

I got very irate and I beat him up - one of the very few occasions in my life I was violent

Nicholas van Hoogstraten

Mr van Hoogstraten denies masterminding the murder of Mohammed Raja, 62, who was stabbed and shot at his Surrey home in July 1999.

Mr Raja was taking civil court proceedings against the tycoon, alleging fraud.

When the prosecution asked him about a 13-year-old World in Action documentary, Mr van Hoogstraten said: "You are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

"It has nothing to do with this trial".

Documentary 'failed'

As the cross-examination continued, Mr van Hoogstraten said: "I was the subject of a programme made by left wing journalists who were trying to discover the government's intention to open up the housing market."

He said the programme failed to prove that his methods of dealing with tenants were inappropriate.

Mr van Hoogstraten said he remembered telling the interviewer that he was "probably ruthless and violent" but only in response to a question using those terms.

Turning to another incident, the defendant told how an accountant had once stolen money from him in Paris.

"I got very irate and I beat him up - one of the very few occasions in my life I was violent."

David Waters QC, prosecuting, alleged that the man had been kidnapped, taken to Paris in the boot of a car and kept against his will.

But Mr van Hoogstraten said he was protecting him from the police who were after him.

Tycoon target

Mr Waters said: "You revel in displaying how ruthless and violent you are," to which Mr van Hoogstraten replied: "Absolutely not."

The World in Action programme had not come up with anyone with complaints about him, he said.

The documentary quoted him saying he had a "few violent associates - but that anyone can be brought to the point of violence, depending on the circumstances".

Asked what he meant when he told the interviewer "we have people to call on - from time to time", he said as a nightclub owner, he had bouncers.

"I am a target - so sometimes we had people around," he said.

Previous conviction

In a magistrates' court case in 1979, he was fined �200 or three nights in prison for causing actual bodily harm to a bailiff, the court heard.

Mr van Hoogstraten said he had pushed the man out of his office when he tried to serve a summons on a different person.

He also told the interviewer how he had spat at a woman tenant who refused to move from a garden at a block of flats.

Though not proud of it, it had the desired effect, he said.

He told the Old Bailey that he believed that the woman was not his tenant and a "junkie".

Van Hoogstraten, 57, of Framfield, Uckfield, East Sussex, denies murdering Mr Raja.

He also denies conspiring with David Croke, 59, of Bolney Road, East Moulsecoomb, Brighton, and Robert Knapp, 55, of Convent Street, Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, and others to murder Mr Raja between January 1 and July 3, 1999.

Croke and Knapp deny murdering Mr Raja. The prosecution alleges they were hired by van Hoogstraten to carry out the killing.

The case continues.