A MILLIONAIRE, jailed for ten years after being found guilty of kidnapping and threatening to kill two North-East businessmen, has had his convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Volker Kappler, 41, from Llanfairtalhaiarn, near Conwy, North Wales, was convicted at Teesside Crown Court in October 2003 of kidnapping John Wood and David Langhorne, and trying to blackmail them out of £600,000.

However, three judges have ruled the convictions unsafe, overturned them and ordered a retrial.

Lord Justice Longmore, sitting with Mrs Justice Gloster and Judge John Diehl QC, said fresh evidence had emerged which cast doubt on the "independence" of a crucial prosecution witness.

Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne claimed they were handcuffed, beaten, had hoods put over their heads and bundled into the back of a white Transit van at gunpoint in March 2003.

It was the prosecution case that Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne were abducted from Mr Wood's Hartlepool factory by bogus Customs and Excise officials before being driven more than 200 miles to Mr Kappler's Superflexibles plastics factory, in Mold.

The men were said to have threatened to cut off Mr Langhorne's ear with a knife, kill the business partners, rape Mr Wood's wife, kill her and their children and cousins unless they handed over £600,000.

Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne said they were made to strip and wear tracksuits and trainers before being questioned by two men.

They said they were dumped, with pillowcases over their heads, in a field beside the M53, near Eastham on the Wirral.

However, Lord Justice Longmore said it was Mr Kappler's defence at trial that the whole thing was a fabrication and that Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne wanted him out of the way for various nefarious reasons of their own.

The judge added: "Effectively, the allegation was that there was no kidnapping, there was no blackmail, that Wood and Langhorne had either invented the incident, or, if it had happened, they were wrongly blaming the appellant (Mr Kappler)".

Mr Kappler said he had been at home with his wife, watching The Simpsons on TV, at the time, and denied all wrong-doing.

Lord Justice Longmore said it was common ground between lawyers in the Appeal Court that Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne "had been involved in serious VAT fraud".

He said that the truth was that Mr Wood, Mr Langhorne and another business associate were undoubtedly involved in a crooked scheme together.

Jim Sturman QC, for Mr Kappler, argued that fresh evidence tended to show that it was arguable that one of the witnesses who testified against Kappler at trial had been a beneficiary of the fraud.

He also told the court it was arguable that that witness should not have been presented to the jury as an independent witness.

Summarising Mr Sturman's submissions, Lord Justice Longmore said: "In short, if what is known now had been known at trial, the trial would have taken a significantly different shape and the summing up would have been in a significantly different form."

Allowing the appeal, the judge concluded: "In the light of that new evidence, we cannot feel sure that the jury would necessarily have convicted".

After their ruling, Mr Sturman told the judges Mr Kappler would shortly be applying to Teesside Crown Court for release on bail.

He will be re-arraigned on the charges within two months and his case was referred to the presiding judge of the North-East circuit for the making of directions for the re-trial, a date for which has yet to be set.