Tycoon Nicholas Hoogstraten is a man for whom money talks.

First he spent a fortune successfully fighting a manslaughter charge, vital because his liberty was at stake.

Now he has won the legal tug-of-war to seize back control of his financial empire.

The property tycoon counts money by the million and to him, taking his cash away was like starving him of oxygen.

Yesterday Mr Hoogstraten won his appeal over the £5 million claim by the family of slum landlord Mohammed Raja, the man he was jailed for killing. The conviction was set aside by the criminal Court of Appeal last year.

Although money talks for Mr Hoogstraten, his turn of phrase is open to interpretation.

He once boasted of being worth £500 million. But when he appeared in court, he said he owned very little.

Nicholas Francis Marcel Hoogstraten was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth but quickly developed a taste for the good life.

Raised during the post-war depression in a modest home in Shoreham, he had his first brush with the law at the age of 11 when he was convicted on two counts of theft at Littlehampton Juvenile Court.

It was the start of a long relationship with the law.

The young Nicholas showed early signs of the guile which became his trademark after his father gave him his valuable stamp collection. The schoolboy traded the best stamps out of his friends' collections and set up a mail order business, using money from his paper round to further his collection.

By 14 Nicholas was going to lessons at a Jesuit school in Worthing in a three-piece suit, a copy of the Financial Times under his arm.

At 16 he joined the Merchant Navy and while overseas, spotted the investment value of The Bahamas.

He bought several thousand acres of land and sat back while it rocketed in value.

When he sold up he bought mining rights in Rhodesia.

He then returned to Britain and bought property in the UK. And so began his empire.

At the peak of his property power, Mr Hoogstraten owned more than 400 homes in Brighton and Hove, plus more in London.

He invested in works of art, antiques and in gold.

As his fortune grew, he moved to Switzerland as a tax exile.

He bought four new suits a month, dressed like a dandy and hired planes to fly to Paris.

However, although he made money hand over fist, he admits to making one mistake.

At the height of the Swinging Sixties he was offered the chance of backing the Rolling Stones but turned them down because they were "a lot of scruffy urchins".

Before his manslaughter conviction was set aside, Mr Hoogstraten did time in Belmarsh prison.

As well as studying law he advised his fellow inmates and officers on the Stock Market.

Always with one eye on his finances, he even managed to make a small profit while inside because he never spent all his canteen money and phone allowance.

"Money means nothing to me" he once protested. But evidence points to the contrary.

He is contemptuous of reports that his mansion, Hamilton Palace outside Framfield, near Uckfield - the largest private house built in Britain in the past century - is worth only £600,000.

"Even the boathouse is worth £1 million" he barked. And he insisted that despite standing empty for years it had been built to last.

"It is weathering and settling...it's not a housing association home," he said.

After yesterday's hearing, the Raja family said it would continue its legal fight to recover the £5 million and Mr Hoogstraten vowed to continue his counter-claim.

In characteristically arrogant mode he said: "How is it (the Raja family's claim) going to go on? They haven't got a bean."

And it is not just money that matters.

Image is all important too.

As a young man in the Sixties he adopted the affectation "Van" to his name.

When he built his mansion he called it not Hamilton Place or Hamilton House but Hamilton Palace, a home fit for a king.

Following his conviction for manslaughter, he was due to appear at a civil hearing in October 2002 but he refused to step into the courtroom while manacled.

He couldn't bear to be thought of as a common criminal.

Despite becoming a Samaritan while in prison and apparently giving money to charity, for Nicholas Hoogstraten, money does indeed make the world go around.