A MILLIONAIRE who masterminded the kidnap of two North-East businessmen was jailed for 11 years yesterday.

German-born industrialist Volker Kappler recruited a gang of armed men to snatch John Wood and David Langhorne from a Hartlepool factory. They were bound, blindfolded and beaten before being driven 200 miles to North Wales, where they were told to pay £600,000 or face being killed.

Kappler, 37, from Conwy, North Wales, needed the money to save his ailing plastics company, Superflexibles, which was owed more than £500,000 by an associate of Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne.

During a three-week trial at Teesside Crown Court, the jury heard that companies owned by the two victims and their associate, Paul Thompson, were involved in a VAT scam and Mr Wood and Mr Langhorne had both received huge tax rebates in the weeks before they were kidnapped.

The men were driven in the back of a van to Kappler's factory, in Mold, on March 14 where they were warned not to tell the police about their ordeal or their families would be murdered. After agreeing to pay the money, they were dumped in a field on Merseyside.

They arranged for a money transfer from an account in Dubai, but later cancelled the transaction and went to the police.

Judge Richard Lowdon told Kappler: "You hired a team of professional hitmen and you condoned their ruthless methods, their violence, the terror they inflicted."

Kappler was found guilty of two counts of kidnap and two of blackmail, with all four verdicts on a ten-two jury majority.

He was jailed for ten years and had a further 12 months added from a suspended sentence he received at Chester Crown Court last November for false accounting.

His barrister, Paul Batty, said: "He used wholly unlawful means in order to try to obtain money to which he was entitled and which he genuinely believed he would not have got in any other way."

Mr Batty said since Kappler's arrest, Superflexibles and two other firms in France and Germany had folded.

After the case, Detective Inspector Amanda Oliver, who led the investigation, said: "This trial has proved Kappler is an evil and manipulative man. But let it be clear, no person is above the law no matter how much money and influence they think they have."

She said police investigations to trace the kidnap gang would continue.