Van Hoogstraten beats porn charges

Notorious British millionaire Nicholas van Hoogstraten has beaten yet another court case, this time in his new home of Zimbabwe, where he was facing porn and foreign currency charges.

The property magnate, who has a chequered background and was once described by a judge as an "emissary of Beelzebub", was cleared after it emerged Zimbabwean police had botched their investigation.

Hoogstraten, who has changed his name to Adolph von Hessen, owns around 200 properties in the African country and is a friend of Robert Mugabe. He was accused of illegally charging his tenants in foreign currency and possessing pornography.

Van Hoogstraten describes Mugabe as ‘100 per cent decent and incorruptible’

But when the case came to court the police failed to produce the officer who detained him over the currency charges and it emerged that police who seized the 64-year-old's porn stash did not have a warrant.

It is not the first time Hoogstraten has walked free from court. In 2002 he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for ordering the murder of business rival, Mohammed Raja. But he was released from prison when his manslaughter conviction was quashed.

Hoogstraten quit Britain in 2005 after he was ordered to pay £6m to Raja's family, saying they would "never get a penny".

He moved to Zimbabwe where he has owned land since the 1960s, and is one of the few remaining white landowners in the country. He is an associate of Mugabe, who he has described as "100 per cent decent and incorruptible".

Hoogstraten's career has been a colourful one - he founded his property empire as a teenager after a year in the merchant navy when he bought land in the Bahamas with money raised by selling his stamp collection.

By 1968 he claimed to be the youngest millionaire in Britain at the age of 23. In the same year he was sentenced to four years in jail for firebombing the house of a Jewish leader whose son owed him money.

He also courted controversy by banning ramblers from footpaths near his property in Sussex and in 2001 he was fined £1,500 for contempt of court after telling an opposing lawyer: "You dirty bastard... in due course, you are going to have it."