A ONE-TIME wealthy businessman has offered a claims firm £1m if it can end his 22-year-old legal nightmare.

"The money side of it doesn't matter. All I want is justice,'' said former millionaire Ted Winter, 66, now bankrupt and living on income support.

Mr Winter has been locked in a legal wrangle following a fire in 1980, which destroyed his property in Stockton, the Queen's Hotel, and left him with a £120,000 capital gains tax debt. With penalties and interest the arrears now stand at more than £250,000.

"I go to sleep with it at night and wake up to it in the morning. I have been in hell for 21 years,'' said Mr Winter.

His creditors even have a claim upon his Yarm home.

"I am not giving up now. They are not taking my home from me,'' he said.

Accountants have told him his business and financial losses run into millions of pounds.

Mr Winter, who has had two heart attacks, appeared at Teesside Crown Court in 1993 for threatening the lives of a litigation manager for a firm of solicitors and a tax advisor.

His solicitor told the court his client had been given "flawed'' advice and Judge Hannah imposed a 12-month conditional discharge after saying he had sympathy for Mr Winter.

An attempt to have the courts look again at the events leading to his bankruptcy were ruled out of time in 2001 by Judge Behrens at Newcastle Crown Court.

But Mr Winter now sees an appeal to the House of Lords or the European Court of Human Rights as his only way forward. He has asked professional negotiator and arbiter Martin Miles to put a case together.

Mr Miles said he was impressed by Mr Winter's pledge of a £1m fee - payment conditional on him being successful.

"My response would be that this indicates he is absolutely convinced that he is in the right. It is a classic example of a man particularly hard done by and the legal system getting in the way," said Mr Miles, who is an associate director of the Institute of Independent Businesses.

However, Mr Miles wants a £500 "administration fee'' to open the case.

The bankrupt businessman is hoping to raise the fee through a development company, offering him £125,000 for a sports-related development on the cleared hotel site.