End of friendship, St James style as insider-trading suit begins

It’s nine years ago to the day that a 21-year-old Oliver Curtis went to an Optus shop with his friend John Hartman.

Oliver Curtis and Roxy Jacenko depart Sydney’s Supreme Court yesterday after the first day of Curtis’s trial. Picture: Dylan Robinson

It’s almost nine years ago to the day that a 21-year-old Oliver Curtis went to an Optus shop with his best friend John Hartman and bought a BlackBerry so they could allegedly communicate about insider trades.

While yesterday was the beginning of Curtis’s criminal trial, it marked the near end point of a saga that has very publicly killed a friendship, sacrificed one man’s youth to a prison sentence and now threatens to take another away from his young family.

Being set in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, this story does of course have its own PR.

Roxy Jacenko, the “PR Queen” for Sydney’s elite, accompanied her handsome husband to the NSW Supreme Court yesterday looking stunning in a black designer dress that was, no doubt, some time in the choosing.

But the cold Victorian interior of the St James criminal courts is a different world from the eastern suburbs parties the two manage and attend, one out of the control of anyone’s PR skills and which threatens to take the young couple’s world away.

Curtis is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit ­insider trading for his role in the alleged criminal partnership with his former best friend that saw the pair net about $1.5 million.

Standing in a fine-cut navy-blue suit, Curtis was asked yesterday how he pleaded. “Not guilty,” he replied. If found guilty, the banker and son of a prominent Sydney finance identity could go to jail for up to five years.

One person unlikely to feel too much sympathy is former best friend Hartman, who has already served a 15-month prison sentence after admitting to his role in the insider trading.

Hartman has turned star witness for the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, and his testimony will be vital if Curtis is to be convicted.

Crown prosecutor David Staehli SC told the jury on the first day of the trial that the alleged agreement between the pair would need to be proven to uphold a conviction.

“The case is not about the amount of money that they made — but it is not irrelevant — this case is about whether they agreed to do it,” Mr Staehli told the court.

This agreement was allegedly struck when Hartman was a young equities trader at Orion Asset Management fund and Curtis was an analyst at Ocean Securities. Mr Staehli told the court that on May 23, 2007, it was Curtis who bought a BlackBerry at an Optus shop in Sydney for Hartman so the two could communicate via a messaging system called “pinning”.

Hartman would allegedly communicate his knowledge of Orion positions on certain stocks of a morning and then Curtis would mirror the trades, going ­either long or short in contracts-for-difference in a CMC Markets account he had set up for the pair.

Their first trade, 32,000 CFDs in ERA, netted them $11,000 for a morning’s work. In a little over a year they would allegedly make $1.68m and lose just $250,000 on their trades.

Curtis is alleged to have paid Hartman via a new Mini Coupe, a Ducati motorcycle and rent-free living in the $3000-a-week apartment the pair shared in Bondi.

The trial is expected to run a week, with Curtis’s barrister to make his opening address today.