5 days ago
Police tighten net around Britain's Wolf of Wall Street
Police are tightening the net around 'Britain's Wolf of Wall Street', who absconded while on trial for defrauding investors out of £70m in a Ponzi-style scam.
An international manhunt is under way for Anthony Constantinou, a 41-year-old City boss from north London convicted of a string of fraud offences at Southwark Crown Court in June 2023.
Constantinou, a convicted sex offender, fled the UK before he was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment, and has been ordered to pay back £64m or have his sentence doubled.
Interpol has issued a silver notice against Constantinou, which will allow British detectives to seize any overseas assets, such as cars or properties, that he owns.
He is also the subject of a red notice, giving police in any one of the organisation's 196 member countries the authority to find and arrest him.
The investigation is being led by City of London Police, which handles England's most high-profile fraud investigations.
Constantinou's whereabouts are unknown, but police previously thought him to be in Turkey or Dubai after he was stopped in Bulgaria with a fake Spanish passport.
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.
The seven-week trial heard that hundreds of investors were duped out of a total of £70m between 2013 and 2015 while Constantinou ran Capital World Markets (CWM).
The company promised investors they would receive 60 per cent on what he claimed were 'risk-free' foreign exchange investments of between £50,000 and £100,000.
CWM had high-profile sponsorship deals with the Honda Moto GP, Chelsea Football Club, Wigan Warriors rugby league club, Cyclone Boxing Promotions and the London Boat Show.
The company paid investors some of their money back and spent the rest.
Constantinou spent £2.5m on his 'no expense spared' wedding on the Greek island of Santorini in September 2014, while his son's first birthday party a few days earlier cost more than £70,000.
More than £470,000 was paid for private jets to fly him and his associates to Moto GP races across Europe as well as a return flight to Nice for a €150,000 (£130,000) five-day yacht cruise around the Mediterranean to Monaco.
The company paid £200,000 each quarter to rent offices in the City's Heron Tower, while nearly £600,000 was spent on just six months rent of Constantinou's large home in Hampstead, north-west London, where his luxury cars were parked in the drive.
Dept Commissioner Nik Adams, of the City of London Police, said: 'This is a significant step forward in our ongoing commitment to delivering justice and compensating the many victims of Constantinou.
'We recognise the profound impact this has had on those involved, and we are actively working to ensure they receive the compensation they deserve.
'Through close partnership, working both nationally and with our international counterparts, we will now work to recover potential assets held abroad and apply to confiscate them.
'As the national lead force for fraud, we remain committed in our mission to combat financial crime, and we will continue to support those affected by it.'
