Rogue trader: On the hunt for London's Wolf of Wall Street

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, how London's so-called Wolf of Wall Street finally fell from grace. This is a case that is a classic example of sort of a downfall from a great height. And this was a guy who had a fascinating backstory to start off with, who was the silver bullets murder, the notorious killing of his dad, and then a man who obviously had access to wealth, but had essentially built himself up from the ground to create what seemed to be this successful company.

0:49Deals with Chelsea Football Club, meeting Princess Anne, etc., etc. You know, this was a guy who was riding high. And then all of a sudden, this story broke, which said that everything is not as it seems, and there's fraud, you know, and he's in the dock at the Old Bailey and at Southwark Crown Court and then eventually he's actually in a prison cell. So it's got that rise and fall element that does really tell a fascinating story, quite aside from the fact that this is a story with many facets to it that are just incredibly interesting. But first, city poster boy Antony Constantinou made millions from a Ponzi-style investment scam, but now police have no idea where he is.

1:38This is a man who seemed to have it all, but it turns out that the empire he built was founded on industrial-scale fraud. He grew up amid family tragedy, but after building his fortune in a remarkably short amount of time, he was exposed as a sexual bully of the square mile. And when police raided his business empire, they discovered that he was the architect of£70 million worth of fraud on his clients. And to this day, he remains on the run, at the centre of a worldwide manhunt, attempting to evade a 28-year prison sentence in the UK. A death certificate filed last year stated that he died of a heart attack while in Guadalajara, Mexico, but investigators have since claimed that some of the documents contain inaccuracies, according to Bloomberg.

2:31I spoke to the Standards Court's correspondent Tristan Kirk, who has been following the story of Anthony Constantino for this week's special report. Tristan, who actually is Anthony Constantino? Why are we talking about him today? Anthony Constantino was a big name in the city for quite a short period of time, 2013, 2014. He was seen as a bit of a rising star amongst people within the Square Mile. He was the head of what appeared to be a very successful foreign exchange trading platform. And it seemed like everything was going well. He was also somebody with a fairly famous family background. and he was seen rowing shoulders with royalty, striking deals with people within the sporting industry.

3:21So far, so good. But then things turned very, very sour indeed. He was arrested. His officers at the top of a skyscraper in the city were raided and the criminal investigation started to pile up. It ended in two separate criminal trials, two different convictions, prison sentences, and now Constantinou is on the run at the centre of an international manhunt and hopefully with the police closing in on his location wherever it may be. And how rich was he? How much wealth are we talking about here? Anthony Constantinou was running a company based in Heron Tower, which is one of the most well-known skyscrapers within the city of London.

4:07He had these fabulous officers overlooking the capital. Business was good. He was offering people the chance to invest in foreign exchange trades, suggesting that they would get pretty much low risk returns, thousands of pounds invested, many more thousands of pounds back. And so he was promising his clients that he would put the money into foreign exchange trades at his company called Capital World Markets. He was showing all the signs of being a very successful sort of leader of industry, spending 2.5 million pounds on his wedding, tens of thousands of pounds on the first birthday party for his son, splashing out on his collection of fast cars, Porsches, Range Rovers, and living himself in a rented property worth several million pounds in Hampstead.

5:02So the outward perception of Antony Constantini was that this was a man on the rise who was making lots of money for his clients and consequently lots of money for himself as well. But his family had previously made the headlines in tragic circumstances. Tell me more about that. This is a story not just about Antony Constantini but also about his family in particular, his father, Aristos Constantino, who was the son of a Greek Cypriot tailor, moved to the UK in the 1960s and really caught the wave of the fashion industry as it was rising in the swinging 60s. Business was good. And he was one of the people who was right at the center of that alongside his brother, Achilles.

5:49They founded their own fashion brand, Ariella. They had a workshop in Carnaby Street, premises just off Oxford Street. And they were supplying all of the top retailers, John Lewis, etc., whilst also throwing these opulent, fabulous cocktail parties and events for everybody in high society in London at that time. People who read into the story will know, however, that it ended in tragedy. Aristos Constantinou, at a time when Antony, his son was just a couple of years old, was shot dead at his mansion in the Bishop's Avenue, which is sometimes known as Billionaire's Row up in Hampstead. Aristos and his wife, Elena, were returning from a party on New Year's Eve.

6:39They came back to their mansion quite late, and then an incident broke out, which ended with Aristos being shot six times using polished nickel jacket and bullets. It's an incident that obviously made the news. It was a notorious murder, became known as the Silver Bullets murder. Ever since that day, when it happened, there has been a whirl of intrigue, and suspicion about what happened because, crucially, nobody has ever been charged and convicted with Aristos' murder. So how pivotal do you think his father's death was in this story? The event, the death, completely split the Constantini family because one side, the brother Achilles, and that side of the family, in the end, accused Aristos' wife, Elena, of involvement in the crime itself.

7:33Now, her story at the time of the shooting was that when they got back from their party, there'd been masked men at the property, broken in. She was grabbed, taken to the bathroom, all sounds very traumatic, and held a gunpoint. In the meantime, her husband was shot dead, and then she managed to escape out of the bathroom window. That was a story that she told at the time. Subsequently, the account completely changed and said that this was somebody with a grudge who'd come and carried out the shooting. And now that I can't say in any way what the truth is in all of that. But over the years, the other side of the family, Aristides' brother and relatives have said that there is suspicion there.

8:17And they even engaged the services of what was then a leading human rights lawyer, Keir Starmer, to dig into the case, to get access to the files, and to see what there was that they could learn more about what happened to Aristos. And they ended up making dramatic and public allegations against Elena that she denied that she had some involvement in the shooty. And as I said, that's a mystery that remains unsolved, really, a family at war, a murder that's never fully been explained. And then out of that comes Anthony Constantinou as this high-flying figures fall from grace. Let's go to a break.

8:58Coming up in part two, he had all the trappings of success, but now remains a fugitive from the law. We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back. We're returning to the story of Anthony Constantinou. So Tristan, what exactly led to this man's downfall? Well, the story picks up in 2015 when, as I say, Anthony was riding high. He'd just been striking deals with the likes of Chelsea. He was doing sponsorship deals, the London Boat Show with the MotoGP team. Basically, things were good, and he was given the impression of being incredibly successful and somebody that people wanted to be associated with.

9:41Then news started to come out that there was a criminal investigation. City of London police were looking very closely at his company, CWN, and there was a raid on the officers in Heron Tower. And it started to emerge that they were looking at allegations of fraud, that what was being sold to the clients wasn't in any way accurate, that money was being taken from customers who thought it was going on trades, but it was actually being spent on things that it shouldn't have been, and particularly the lavish lifestyle that Constantini was living. Now, that fraud investigation then sat in the background, essentially, as Constantini himself was charged with six allegations of sexual assault.

10:25And his behavior in his officers came under close scrutiny, eventually in the form of an Old Bailey trial where he was accused by three different women of sexual assaults and misconduct, essentially bullying behavior. When the trial happened, some of his behavior was gone over in incredible detail. And we heard about drunken, lavish parties at the officers, staff essentially feeling like they had to take part in these events because the boss said so. and he was plying women with alcohol. One of them said that he had forced her to basically drink glasses of vodka and orange, and then he kissed her against her will in the toilets.

11:06Another woman talked about being force-fed wasabi during a board meeting in an incident that sounded particularly horrible, making abusive, vile comments about her objectifying her, and then pinned her against the wall and kissed her, as she said, like a piece of meat, and then went on to tell her, you can't say no to a Greek man. In the trial, Constantinou was likened to the main character in the film, The Wolf of Wall Street. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marco Robbi, and depicts this character, Jordan Belfort, who was a notorious trader in the US on Wall Street in the late 80s, who turned out to be a fraud.

11:51He was in a similar way to Constantinou, was selling trades in a dishonest fashion and was eventually called to account. But he was also notorious for these wild parties on the office floor, all kinds of behavior. And so the evidence that was put forward in the Old Bailey trial about Constantinou led to him, included by one of the victims being likened to a Wolf of Wall Street type character, it really draws a picture of excess, of very unpleasant behaviour, particularly towards women, of this idea of the rich person who thinks that they are unstoppable and can do pretty much whatever they like.

12:36What was he charged with? In the end, Constantini was convicted at the trial of two counts of sexual assault. He was cleared of a third count of sexual assault and there were three charges that the jury couldn't decide on. That was the end of the criminal proceedings and it concluded with Constantini being sent to prison for 12 months. Okay, so tell me how exactly this crook has managed to avoid justice. Now that was in 2016 when that all concluded and his story picks up again in 2020 when the fraud investigation finally comes to fruition, charges are brought. And in 2023, there was another trial at Southwark Crown Court involving the financial mismanagement that I've talked about at his CWM company.

13:26The jurors were told that there were something in the region of£70 million worth of trades and deals, which were fraudulent, that he was rinsing his clients for their money and spending it in ways that he shouldn't have been. And so then that trial went on for a few months and concluded with guilty verdicts. And Constantini was sentenced to 14 years in prison. But here's the wrinkle. During the trial, he turned up for the start, but midway through the trial, he did a runner. You're the standards courts correspondent. Do you think this kind of thing happens often? I think it's not often that people go on the run, but it's also not the first time that it's happened.

14:08Some people see the writing on the wall. They know what's coming. They know they did it. And they know they're likely to be sent to prison when the final decision is taken. Quite frankly, it's the kind of thing that people can't necessarily do, can't achieve, at least successfully, unless they've got the kind of resources that somebody like Anthony Constantinou presumably still had access to. We know that he turned up at one point in Bulgaria, shortly after he'd left. He was trying to enter Turkey with a false Spanish passport. You need resources to get hold of that kind of thing. But unfortunately, because this is about trying to bring a man to justice, that the Bulgarian authorities essentially let him go before the UK police could be informed and go over there to effect an arrest.

14:59So despite the fact that there was an arrest warrant already out for Constantino, and it should have been known essentially around the world that he was being hunted, he got away and has continued to be on the run for the two years that have followed. Finally, where does that leave us now? What happens if he's caught? He is obviously on the run. There is an active manhunt. The police are seizing assets, trying to close the net around him. And if he was ever brought back to the UK, he'd be liable to serve not only the 14-year jail term he got for the frauds, but also another 14 years in prison because he's failed to address a£64 million proceeds of crime order.

15:41Now, they toughened up the law a few years ago on that. And so there are extra jail term on top of the existing one. So if he was ever brought to justice, it would be 28 years in jail that he would face.

15:57And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow at 5pm. We'll see you then.