Oliver Curtis free and starting work on Monday after release from one year in prison
EX-CON investment banker Oliver Curtis enjoyed a Bondi Beach brekkie with PR queen wife Roxy Jacenko and their children today following his release from prison as he prepares to work at his father’s company on Monday.
NSW
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DISGRACED investment banker Oliver Curtis will walk into a ready-made job in his father’s company first thing Monday morning.
The Saturday Telegraph can reveal that Curtis will transition immediately from jailbird to a business development officer with dad Nick’s medical technology start-up E-Nome.
Curtis was last night ensconced back in his luxe eastern suburbs life with publicist wife Roxy Jacenko after serving a minimum one-year jail sentence for insider trading.
Early yesterday the 31-year-old was wide-eyed, jittery and lean as he walked to freedom through the historic timber doorway of Cooma jail, where he was met by a minder and a waiting media pack.
Curtis then jumped into the passenger seat of black Range Rover and was driven the 17km to the humble Snowy Mountains Airport, where his Burberry-clad children Pixie, 5, and Hunter, 3, waited inside the door of a waiting private jet. The pair screamed in excitement as they beckoned their father on board.
The children — who had been told their father was on a business trip to China instead of the difficult truth — had been counting down the days to his return.
The joy was writ large on their faces as Curtis took photos of the pair on his mobile phone as he strode towards them.
Standing behind the children inside the jet — estimated to have cost about $6000 to charter — Jacenko was waiting with a smile on her face.
There has been great speculation about the pair’s future, with Jacenko repeatedly seen without her wedding ring during her husband’s stint behind bars.
Once she was even photographed kissing Sydney millionaire property developer Nabil Gazal — a former flame who has been vocal about his love for her.
The Saturday Telegraph can reveal Curtis told one of his fellow jail inmates that he was prepared to forgive his wife for any indiscretions while he was behind bars if she could forgive him for the mistakes that put him in jail.
Yesterday, Jacenko put on a show of unity and was the very picture of a supportive wife. The pair welcomed a visit from Curtis’s parents yesterday as they remained holed up in their Bondi home.
The Saturday Telegraph understands it is at Jacenko’s insistence that Curtis is rushing back to work.
She has spoken to friends about carrying the load of the family in his absence, declaring she had been “basically a hostage” in her own home.
“He needs to get to work,” a friend said. “He will be there Monday morning.”
Curtis’s father Nick — a well known mining magnate and financier — will welcome his son into E-Nome’s operations, with the business registered to his luxury Elizabeth Bay residence with its principal office at Kent St in the city.
Because he was found guilty of an offence involving dishonesty, the younger Curtis is subject to an Australian Securities and Investment Commission ban that prohibits from him being a company director for five years.
He is free to work in the finance industry but would need a company with an Australian Financial Services licence to employ him as he does not have his own licence.
There remains a question mark over how many people will be happy to do business with the former private schoolboy who cooked up a dodgy insider trading scheme with a mate.
People may forgive but they seldom forget.
Curtis will need to be on his best behaviour.
He served just half of his two-year sentence, so a Commonwealth good behaviour bond for the remaining year means that he could return to jail if he offends again during that time.
Curtis and his then close mate John Hartman — both of them old boys of St Ignatius, Riverview — pocketed $1.43 million using a deliberate system of insider trades.
Hartman was an equities trader at boutique firm Orion Asset Management when he gave the tips to Curtis to bet on market shifts.
Curtis voluntarily paid the money back in full to the Commonwealth in a repentant gesture before his 2016 sentencing.
At the time of sentencing, Justice Lucy McCallam said Curtis and Hartman ploughed their ill-gotten gains into “a lifestyle of conspicuous extravagance”.
That lifestyle included a $3000-a-week Bondi apartment, motorbikes and overseas holidays.
Jacenko has made no secret of the fact her husband’s conviction affected her PR business.
“I could cope on the exterior but I couldn’t cope on the interior,” she said.
“We did lose clients … we didn’t get approached as much. People didn’t want to be associated with (the bad media attention).”
With Curtis now out of prison the real challenges for the couple are only just beginning.
Earlier this week, Jacenko opened up at a business lunch about the pressures she’d been under.
“I have had to be the man and the woman of the house ... I have had to make sure the bills are paid, that my kids’ school fees are paid and everything is done,” Jacenko said.
“I’m basically a hostage in my own home. In the evening when I come home I have to stay home.”
The owner of Sweaty Betty PR agency and former Celebrity Apprentice said her daughter had been desperately awaiting her dad’s return — a truth writ large on the little girl’s face at Cooma yesterday.
“She’s marking off the days and now we’re down to however many sleeps ... she can count now she goes to school,” Ms Jacenko said.
They are going to need reassurance that their father will not be leaving again in a hurry.
“I might have to take them in the car with him to [his] office so they can see there is no plane involved, or handcuffs for that matter,” she said last week.
Jacenko may still be a hostage in her own home every evening — but at least she will have her husband there to keep her company.
The question will be whether they can forgive each other enough to move on.
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