Roxy Jacenko’s jailbird husband Oliver Curtis could walk free in time for Christmas

ROXY Jacenko has vowed to boycott Christmas unless husband Oliver Curtis walks free from jail tomorrow.

Roxy Jacenko has described the day of husband Oliver Curtis’ sentencing as the worst of her life.

ROXY Jacenko’s nightmare year is coming to an end, but will she put up the Christmas tree?

The PR queen is about to find out whether her family will be reunited for the holidays, with the Court of Criminal Appeal poised to rule on husband Oliver Curtis’ fate.

The 31-year-old is locked up at Cooma jail for conspiracy to commit insider trading in a scheme that netted Curtis and his co-accused $1.43 million.

And Jacenko won’t be hanging up the tinsel until he is able to come home to his young children, she revealed in an interview withWho.

“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.”

She said Curtis rang to speak to his kids every day, with calls from the prison limited to six minutes.

Oliver Curtis posed for this family photo in between his conviction and sentencing.

And Jacenko revealed five-year-old Pixie had been the hardest hit by her father’s absence, which she has previously said she explained away on an overseas work trip.

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.

Jacenko, who had remained stoic throughout Curtis’ trial but broke down in tears when he was convicted, described this as her darkest day.

“I went straight back to work after and I got this news alert on my email, and the story was about me,” she said.

“I looked up to the TV news and saw Oliver walk with handcuffs into the prison van ... It was like watching a movie.”

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.

Roxy Jacenko took Pixie and Hunter to Bondi Beach on Father’s Day. Picture: Cameron Richardson

Jacenko, who was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after her husband was jailed, remained upbeat about her challenges, which she described as “very small in comparison to others”.

“So I got cancer, and my husband went to jail, but that’s life,” she said. “It’s unfortunate Ollie is where he is, but it’s a chapter that needed to end.”

The prospect of criminal charges over the scheme hatched with Hartman in 2007 had loomed over Curtis for years.

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, to whom he passed on confidential information about his then employer, Orion Asset Management.

Curtis then 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 Hartman’s direction.

The proceeds were used to bankroll the pair’s 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.

Court of Criminal Appeal Justices Anthony Payne, Derek Price and David Davies will hand down their decision on Friday, December 16.

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Originally published as Roxy Jacenko’s jailbird husband Oliver Curtis could walk free in time for Christmas