Roxy Jacenko’s husband Oliver Curtis loses appeal

ROXY Jacenko’s family will not be reunited for Christmas after a court ruled on white collar criminal husband Oliver Curtis’ appeal.

Roxy Jacenko and Oliver Curtis outside the Supreme Court in June. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

ROXY Jacenko’s dreams of seeing her family reunited for Christmas have been crushed, after an appeal court upheld husband Oliver Curtis’ white collar conviction.

The 31-year-old was convicted in June of conspiracy to commit insider trading, over a scheme that netted him and his co-accused $1.43 million, and has been locked up at Cooma jail after receiving a minimum one-year jail sentence.

At his October appeal, top silk Bret Walker SC argued for Curtis’ conviction to be overturned on the grounds that the Crown had not proven the charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading because it did not establish the “materiality” of the information passed to Curtis by his co-accused, former St Ignatius College mate John Hartman.

But the appeal was unanimously dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on Friday morning.

Jacenko, who had remained by Curtis’ during his 12-day trial, did not attend the appeal and was a no-show at court again this morning.

Her absence was hinted at when she posted one of her trademark elevator selfies on Instagram at about 8.30am, sporting a casual LV T-shirt — a departure from the glamorous courtroom attire that made headlines throughout the trial.

“Sorry you didn’t get the good news you hoped for,” a supporter commented.

Jacenko wore head-to-toe Louis Vuitton on the day Curtis’ verdict was handed down, and travelled to Paris as a guest of the fashion house along with Francesca Packer Barham earlier in the year — an honour reserved for only the biggest-spending customers.

Curtis and Jacenko, in LV, on the day of the verdict.

Roxy’s casual LV T-shirt post this morning.

Curtis was jailed over a scheme hatched in 2007, under which Hartman passed on confidential information about his then-employer Orion Asset Management.

Curtis executed trades that earned up to $20,000 in as little as 10 minutes, buying and selling Contracts for Difference (CFDs) on particular companies’ stocks at specific times under his school friend’s direction.

The scheme bankrolled the pair’s flashy Eastern Suburbs lifestyle, including $168,420 rent on a luxurious Bondi pad, a $60,000 Mini Cooper, a $20,000 Ducati motorcycle and trips to Whistler and Las Vegas in the US.

APPEAL DISMISSED

The Court of Criminal Appeal unanimously rejected the appeal, which rested on the highly technical argument that the information passed to Curtis had not been shown to be “material in the sense that, if such information were generally available, a reasonable person would expect it to have a material effect on the price or value of relevant contracts for difference”.

In his written decision, with which Justices Derek Price and David Davies agreed, Justice Anthony Payne said it did not matter whether the information would have had this effect.

“All the Crown was required to prove was that Mr Hartman and the appellant entered into an agreement to commit an insider trading offence,” Justice Payne wrote.

“It was not an element of the conspiracy offence charged that the information the subject of the agreement be proven in fact to be material.”

In this respect, he wrote, the trial judge had misdirected the jury, who were “entitled to be satisfied that the Crown had established beyond reasonable doubt that prior to making the agreement with the appellant, Mr Hartman had selected pertinent information from that available to him about the trading intentions of Orion and used that information to conduct successful trades in his own name [in] breach of the insider trading provisions.”

Supreme Court Justice Lucy McCallum sentenced Curtis to a one-year minimum jail term on June 28, rejecting his legal team’s request for a suspended sentence or home detention.

“I do not think any lesser sentence would be adequate,” Justice McCallum said at the time, saying a custodial sentence was necessary to deter others from committing white collar crimes.

Hartman, who was the Crown’s star witness in Curtis’ trial, was himself convicted of insider trading and related offences in 2010.

He served a 15-month prison sentence after receiving a 10 per cent discount for agreeing to testify against his mate.

Roxy Jacenko celebrates her birthday with the family in between Curtis’ conviction and sentencing.

In the lead-up to Friday’s court decision, Jacenko spoke of the impact of the legal proceedings on her young children, telling Who magazine that five-year-old Pixie had been the hardest hit. She said Curtis rang to speak to his kids every day, with calls from the prison limited to six minutes.

Jacenko had previously admitted to telling Pixie and younger brother Hunter that their father was away overseas on an extended work trip.

“My mum said to me the other day ‘I think I’m going to get a Christmas tree’,” she told the magazine.

“I said, ‘You can’t, because I told Pixie and Hunter their father would be home by Christmas. I was so far away then ... Now here we are.”

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Originally published as Roxy Jacenko’s husband Oliver Curtis loses appeal