A man who ran a £70mn ‘ponzi-style’ scheme has been jailed for 14 years but police have launched an appeal for information to find him.
Anthony Constantinou, 41, of no fixed address, ran Capital World Markets between late 2013 and early 2015.
He was arrested in Bulgaria last month while trying to enter Turkey while in possession of false documents. He was later released and police officers believe he is now either in Turkey or Dubai, but he also has family connections to Greece and Cyprus.
His last known address is in London.
Investors in the scheme were told 10 per cent of their capital would be ‘risked’, with the remaining 90 per cent held ‘safely’ in a ‘segregated account’ in Germany.
Constantinou offered investors returns of 60 per cent per year on ‘risk-free’ foreign exchange markets.
Last week he was jailed for 14 years after being found guilty of seven charges including fraud by false representation, fraudulent trading and money laundering. He was also disqualified from being a director of a company for 25 years.
Constantinou initially attended court at the start of his trial but he fled the UK before being arrested in Bulgaria.
An international arrest warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Detective Inspector Nichola Meghji, from the City of London Police, said Constantinou was a career criminal who has “no regard” for anyone but himself.
“We are glad that he has now been jailed for such a significant period of time and we hope that his victims can take some comfort in knowing how seriously the judge has taken his crimes,” she said.
Police believe Constantinou has access to documents and money under other names, and has used the aliases of Antonis Hadjicostis and Georgios Arnaoutakis.
“It is also vitally important that people come forward with information as Constantinou was previously convicted of sexual assault in 2016 and by absconding from the UK, he is now in breach of his sexual offences harm order.”
The 'ponzi style' scheme
Constantinou told potential investors there was a minimum investment of £50,000, rising to £100,000 later on, and that they would receive returns of 5 per cent per month, with an additional cut if they had introduced other investors to the company.
The money was not invested in the foreign exchange market as promised, and was instead partly used to pay back other investors.
An investigation into Constantinou began in 2014, with officers at the City of London Police deciding to stop the scheme before it collapsed to preserve as much money as possible from investors and to stop further people falling victim to the fraud.
The investigation showed extravagant spending of clients’ funds, including £3mn spent by Constantinou on events such as his own wedding and the company’s launch party.
He denied knowledge of the fraud and did not attend the later stages of his trial, and an international arrest warrant has been issued to locate him.
sally.hickey@ft.com
