Nicholas Hoogstraten is an evil, odious, deceitful, cheating, arrogant, spiteful bully. Now an Old Bailey jury has found he is a killer too.

This man has been a malignant cancer on the face of Brighton and Hove for more than 30 years.

He has strutted around Sussex causing mayhem, growing rich on the backs of his downtrodden and frightened tenants.

Hoogstraten was a villain right from the start. As a young man, he was sent to jail after arranging for a grenade to be put through the window of a business associate with whom he had fallen out.

Now, in an ugly echo of that crime more than 30 years ago, he is paying the price for what his henchmen did to Mohammed Raja.

They went to the door of Mr Raja's home in Sutton and killed him in a savage and brutal manner.

Mr Raja was no angel. Like Hoogstraten, he made money through an empire of shabby property in Brighton and Hove's bedsitter belt, leaving tenants to fester while he lived in style. But he did not deserve to be stabbed and shot by hitmen on his doorstep.

His mistake was to have crossed Hoogstraten who affected to be unmoved by money but hated to lose face.

Hoogstraten was in no way humbled by his early experience in jail. He continued to treat many people with contempt, including scores of his tenants, referring to them as scum. He said much the same about ramblers he illegally barred from wandering along a footpath through the grounds of his absurdly grandiose modern palace at Framfield.

He arranged for one tenant's belongings to be ejected through an upstairs window in Brighton, saying it was the best bit of fun he'd had in ages.

Hoogstraten claimed to be pals with the despotic Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

He reckons to have kept his nose clean and to have been friendly with the police over the years but there are still unexplained mysteries about the fatal fire in Hove ten years ago and the abduction of his accountant before that.

Hoogstraten had an undoubted talent for making money and to him that meant power. It meant he could bully and cajole people he regarded as being subservient or stupid.

He was able to create a complicated network of companies to carry out his often nefarious business. When he wanted to teach someone a lesson, he could hire hitmen to do his dirty work for him.

This man delighted in building up an image of himself as evil and powerful. It helped silence some of those who otherwise could have complained about his activities.

After so long out of prison, he felt he was above the law and that he could be his own judge and jury, dispensing punishment on those he regarded as filth.

Mohammed Raja, whatever else he may have been, was no coward. He stood up to Hoogstraten and he paid the price with his life.

Now Hoogstraten himself has found that no man, however mighty and powerful he may consider himself to be, can escape the full rigours of the law.

Nicholas Hoogstraten will have to exchange his smart suits for prison uniform and his mighty mansion for a prison cell.

This extremely nasty piece of work does not deserve ever to see the Sussex sunlight again. He should be safely and securely locked up so he cannot commit any more of his evil crimes.

The contract killing has confirmed what many people already knew. Hoogstraten, to use his own words, is scum.