A decade in the past Anthony Constantinou seemed to be the epitome of a Square Mile success story — sitting atop a burgeoning enterprise empire, rubbing shoulders with royalty and placing offers with Premier League champions. His City of London agency had risen quickly to prominence, making a fortune in a brief house of time. This was thanks in no small half to Constantinou’s bullish boasts of high-flying connections and provides of bountiful rewards from low-risk investments. However in actuality, his home was constructed on an internet of lies, and when the crash got here it was swift and brutal.
Constantinou’s bullying behaviour and predatory abuse of ladies was revealed, because it emerged he oversaw an workplace setting likened to the debauchery of Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Police raided his enterprise empire and found that Constantinou was the architect of a £70 million fraud on his purchasers. Now he’s on the run and on the centre of a worldwide manhunt, trying to evade a 28-year jail sentence within the UK.
He spent £2.5million on his wedding ceremony in Santorini — and £70,000 on his son’s first birthday celebration
It’s the newest chapter of a unprecedented life marked by extremes: untold wealth and luxurious, jail and even homicide. So what’s the true story of a person who shelled out £2.5million for his wedding ceremony to spouse Penny on the Greek island of Santorini, and spent £70,000 on his son’s first birthday celebration, whereas additionally amassing a group of high-end autos together with a Porsche and a Vary Rover?
Anthony Constantinou stays on the run after he fled the UK throughout his 2023 fraud trial
PA Archive
January 2015 marked the excessive tide of Constantinou’s rise by the ranks of British society — the son of an immigrant who was the pinnacle of his personal City of London international change buying and selling firm. The agency, Capital World Markets (CWM), had places of work on the prime of Heron Tower skyscraper in Bishopsgate, and enterprise seemed to be booming. Constantinou was pictured assembly Princess Anne on the London Boat Present, an occasion his firm was sponsoring. After which CWM was introduced as an official foreign currency trading companion with Chelsea FC, with a membership government hailing the corporate’s “transparency and integrity”.
However simply two months later, the Chelsea deal was axed as scandal engulfed CWM. Enterprise companions and associates scrambled to distance themselves from Constantinou, as he discovered himself on the centre of two felony investigations.
Metropolis of London Law enforcement officials raided the CWM places of work whereas unravelling a large fraud on the coronary heart of Constantinou’s enterprise community. And ladies got here ahead to carry the lid on his appalling boardroom behaviour.
Anthony Constantinou assembly Princess Anne on the peak of his success
Constantinou was solely three when his father, Aristos Constantinou, was gunned down at his mansion on London’s so-called “Billionaires’ Row”, The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead. The 1985 taking pictures was dubbed the “silver bullets homicide” due to the ammunition used for the killing, and occurred as Aristos returned residence from a New Yr’s get together together with his spouse, Elena.
Aristos was the son of a Greek-Cypriot tailor and arrived in England within the early Sixties, simply in time for the increase in trend design. He gained an schooling at London Style Faculty, secured a again room in Carnaby Road to work from, and set about constructing the wildly profitable Ariella trend model alongside his brother Achilleas.
The brothers gained a grounding within the business from their father after which rode the wave of the British trend revolution — whereas placing their business at the centre of society with cocktail events and occasions. The workshop in Carnaby Road grew to become a completely fledged enterprise off Oxford Road, as Ariella equipped prime retailers together with Jane Norman, DH Evans and John Lewis. By the mid-Nineteen Seventies, the corporate had headquarters in Marylebone and retail outlets around the globe.
Undated handout picture issued by Metropolis of London Police of Anthony Constantinou (Metropolis of London Police/PA)
PA Media
On the night time of the deadly taking pictures, Aristos and Elena had returned residence late to their mansion. Aristos was killed by six polished nickel-jacketed bullets fired at shut vary, together with one into every temple. The homicide, in an prosperous a part of London, made front-page information around the globe, and has by no means been solved. It did, nonetheless, tear the Constantinou household aside.
Elena’s first account was that that they had disturbed a housebreaking when arriving residence, and he or she was grabbed by one of many masked intruders who detained her within the upstairs rest room. She mentioned she was in a position to climb out of a window and down a drainpipe to boost the alarm, however by that point her husband was already useless.
Nonetheless, she later modified her story, saying the taking pictures was the work of the daddy of her extra-marital lover.
The yr after the taking pictures she remarried, leaving the nation together with her three youngsters to start out a brand new life in Cyprus.
The thriller rumbled on for years, with Aristos’s household partaking the companies of Keir Starmer, then a number one human rights lawyer, to realize entry to the investigation information.
In 2012, Aristos’s brother, Achilleas, accused Elena of involvement within the taking pictures, calling for her to be arrested and charged.
She refused to conform to return to the UK for questioning however has all the time denied any involvement in her husband’s dying, and the police motion by no means got here. Up to now, nobody has ever confronted felony fees over the taking pictures.
When, in 2015, Achilleas launched a brand new part of the Ariella model, he was requested to touch upon nephew Anthony’s authorized troubles. “Anthony is the youngest of my brother’s three sons and we had not seen him or his brothers for the final 23 years,” he mentioned on the time, earlier than including: “When he got here to London and visited us a number of years in the past we welcomed him to our household with open arms and it gave me significantly loads of closure. He’s very a lot his personal man and we’ve got nothing in any respect to do with one another in enterprise. We want him properly.”
Anthony had barely began his life when he misplaced his father. He went on to carve out a path in enterprise which echoed his father’s entrepreneurial spirit, beginning up a collection of firms earlier than the muse of CWM in late 2013. As a trial at Southwark crown court docket would hear, his success was constructed on rampant deceit.
Convicted: Anthony Constantinou exterior the Previous Bailey together with his spouse
Sexual bully of the Sq. Mile
In 2014, law enforcement officials within the Metropolis of London started to quietly examine Constantinou’s actions after a collection of whistleblowers got here ahead, alleging not solely monetary malpractice but additionally sexual misconduct.
He was charged the next yr with six counts of sexual assault towards three girls, and having pleaded not responsible, a trial on the Previous Bailey adopted in January 2016. The jury heard intimately how Constantinou insisted on weekly drunken events on the CWM places of work, with workers and associates feeling obliged to affix in. In a single incident, Constantinou plied a girl with vodka to have fun making £1 million revenue on the buying and selling ground earlier than forcibly kissing her within the bogs.
It occurred shortly after Constantinou himself had bought married. One other lady revealed how she was force-fed wasabi by Constantinou throughout a unstable boardroom assembly, earlier than he pinned her towards a wall and kissed her “like a chunk of meat”. He boasted, “You may’t say no to a Greek man”, she instructed the court docket, and he or she likened his behaviour to Leonardo DiCaprio’s dealer character in The Wolf of Wall Road.
Leonardo DiCaprio starred as a a dealer within the Wolf of Wall Road movie
A jury convicted him of two sexual assaults, cleared him of a 3rd, and prosecutors determined to desert three additional fees which the jury couldn’t agree on. Decide Nicholas Cooke QC branded Constantinou a “sexual bully”, and rejected the tycoon’s plea for a suspended jail time period. “He confirmed valuable little humanity to those two younger girls,” mentioned the choose, imposing a 12-month jail sentence.
The trial additionally heard proof of Constantinou’s penchant for firing individuals who made minor errors that angered him, in addition to lurid feedback he would purpose at girls whereas boasting: “I can say regardless of the f*** I like.” Extra authorized troubles have been lurking over the horizon. He was free of jail after serving half the sentence, and ordered to signal the intercourse offenders’ register for 10 years.
A Porsche bought by Anthony Constantinou
CPS
When the CWM places of work had been raided by police in 2015, the corporate issued a bullish assertion claiming it was the “sufferer of an orchestrated marketing campaign initiated by people motivated by private animosity”.
13 individuals had been arrested when the police probe first sprang into motion, nevertheless it was Constantinou alone who, in 2020, was charged with operating a Ponzi scheme. The following trial in 2023 revealed how victims have been lured into handing over tens of hundreds of kilos to CWM with the promise of risk-free investments and engaging income.
That they had been instructed they might obtain exceptional returns of 5 per cent a month, or 60 per cent a yr, approach past something obtainable by mainstream monetary firms.
They sometimes needed to make a minimal dedication of £50,000, though this later rose to £100,000. However the cash was not invested in international change buying and selling. Some was used to pay the early traders and maintain them on board, the remainder spent on funding Constantinou’s lavish way of life — a basic Ponzi scheme.
To assist keep the façade, the corporate had respectable enterprise offers with Chelsea FC, Wigan Warriors rugby league membership, boxing tournaments and the Honda MotoGP crew, Constantinou boasted of his huge array of high-flying contacts, and he had been photographed socialising with Princess Beatrice. He spent six-figure sums on personal jets and yacht cruises, whereas shelling out £800,000 for renting the Heron Tower places of work and round £100,000 a month on his rented Hampstead residence.
Anthony Constantinou duped greater than 300 individuals together with his Ponzi scheme
ES composite
Constantinou appeared within the dock for the beginning of his trial, however by the point the jury convicted him of seven counts of fraud by false illustration, fraudulent buying and selling and cash laundering, he had disappeared. In his absence, he was sentenced in June 2023 to 14 years in jail. Greater than 300 individuals have been duped by Constantinou’s Ponzi scheme, and the detectives who investigated are pulling strings to attempt to get better the misplaced cash.
Constantinou was detained in Bulgaria, briefly, in 2023, as he tried to enter Turkey with a false Spanish passport. However he was let go earlier than the UK authorities could possibly be knowledgeable and swoop in to arrest him. Rumours emerged final summer time that the fugitive businessman had died of a coronary heart assault whereas on the run in Guadalajara, Mexico.
However there have been important doubts over the authenticity of the dying certificates, and investigators have continued to hunt. Police forces around the globe have been authorised to detain Constantinou, whereas Metropolis of London Police has obtained an Interpol “Silver Discover”, which implies its officers can seize his world belongings.
Not solely does the 14-year jail sentence for fraud await Constantinou, however he defaulted on a court docket order to repay £64 million of stolen cash as proceeds of crime. This led a choose to impose an extra 14-year jail time period.
It signifies that Constantinou’s sources of wealth are being progressively withdrawn and restricted, whereas he faces 28 years behind bars — if he can be caught, that’s. Police have promised to proceed their dogged pursuit of Constantinou, in a bid to claw again the victims’ cash.
The one query remaining is whether or not the ultimate chapter of Constantinou’s extraordinary story is seize and a few years behind bars, or being hunted for the rest of his days.
