A financier who used the proceeds of a £70mn Ponzi-style scheme to fund a “lavish life-style” together with non-public jet and yacht rent and his £2.5mn marriage ceremony in Greece has been sentenced to 14 years in jail by a London court docket.
Anthony Constantinou, who ran international trade buying and selling agency Capital World Markets (CWM) from the Heron Tower in central London, went on the run half approach by his trial however was convicted by a jury at Southwark Crown Courtroom final month on seven costs, together with fraud by false illustration, two counts of fraudulent buying and selling and 4 of transferring felony property.
Constantinou absconded from the trial in mid April and was detained by police in Bulgaria in Could as he tried to enter Turkey utilizing a false Spanish passport. He was launched and remains to be on the run.
On Friday he was sentenced in his absence to 14 years in jail by Choose Gregory Perrins, who described Constantinou as a “morally corrupt particular person” who arrange CWM which was “plainly fraudulent from the outset”.
The decide added Constantinou meant “to finance as lavish a life-style as he may probably obtain on the expense of others” and traders’ cash was “spent on the whim of the defendant” or was used to pay some traders promised returns “within the method of a typical Ponzi fraud”.
This trial heard CWM supplied traders returns of about 5 per cent a month.
David Durose KC, prosecuting, instructed the sentencing listening to on Friday that Constantinou was a “decided fraudster” who splashed out £5.8mn in CWM sponsorship “in an try to hoodwink traders into believing it to be reputable” together with sponsorship of Chelsea Soccer Membership and Wigan Warriors Rugby League Membership in addition to the London Boat Present.
He additionally spent £427,000 on non-public jet rent to fly him and his associates to MotoGP races throughout Europe, €150,000 on a five-day cruise across the Mediterranean, £600,000 in lease funds over a six-month interval for a Hampstead mansion. Constantinou was additionally straight paid £810,000 and £156,000 was paid to his spouse.
Durose instructed the court docket Constantinou spent £2.5mn of investor cash on his 2014 marriage ceremony in Santorini and £70,000 on his son’s first celebration.
He added the fraud had affected greater than 300 traders who misplaced retirement funds and financial savings, together with one lady with most cancers who invested cash from an insurance coverage payout in CWM and misplaced £262,500.
Choose Perrins on Friday mentioned Constantinou’s victims had described “a listing of distress” on account of the fraud. “There are quite a few accounts of life financial savings misplaced, household houses having to be offered, devastation, desperation and heartbreak,” he mentioned.
The trial was instructed in regards to the “poisonous” work surroundings — likened to the “Wolf of Wall Road” — created by Constantinou at CWM the place he used to drink closely and “brandish wads of money”.
Choose Perrins on Friday mentioned that at work Constantinou “frequently behaved in a boorish, conceited and intimidating method relying upon his temper. He was usually drunk at work and thought little of belittling others . . . He was a person impressed with the trimmings of maximum wealth and assumed that others ought to be too.”
Constantinou’s newest jail time period comes after he was jailed for 12 months in 2016 after a separate trial at London’s Outdated Bailey the place he was convicted of sexually assaulting two ladies between October 2014 and February 2015, in line with a 2016 Metropolis of London police assertion.
No particular person apart from Constantinou has been charged within the CWM fraud investigation.
David Walbank KC, defence barrister for Constantinou, instructed Friday’s sentencing listening to in mitigation that his defence workforce maintained others had been concerned within the fraudulent scheme and Constantinou had a “troublesome childhood” as his father was shot useless when he was three in an act “which had all of the hallmarks of a contract killing”.
