When the Covid-19 pandemic forced the UK into lockdown in 2020, people up and down the country turned to baking sourdough bread and yoga. For Redinel and Oerta Korfuzi, the restrictions gave cover for a different pursuit: insider trading.
As a result, the Albanian siblings are now facing a new form of lockdown. On Friday, a London judge sentenced former Janus Henderson research analyst Redinel Korfuzi, 38, to six years in prison and his sister Oerta Korfuzi, 36, to five years.
“This case has elements akin to a Greek tragedy where an individual of some standing is brought crashing down by a fatal flaw [ . . .] you both thought of yourselves as being too clever to be caught out,” His Honour Judge Milne told the pair when handing down their prison terms for insider dealing and money laundering.
“This is not a victimless fraud,” he added. “Insider trading diminishes public trust in the integrity of the market.”
The Korfuzi siblings looked straight ahead showing little emotion as the sentences were read out. They were escorted by security guards from the dock straight after.
Their sentencing caps a four-month trial in which the Korfuzis — as well as Redinel’s personal trainer Rogerio de Aquino and de Aquino’s girlfriend Dema Almeziad — were each accused by the UK Financial Conduct Authority of one count of insider trading and one count of money laundering between 2019 and 2021.
A jury found the siblings guilty last month after 19 hours of deliberations. De Aquino and De Almeziad were acquitted of all charges.
Korfuzi had been working at Janus Henderson for less than a year when he decided to start using information he obtained from his job to embark on an insider-trading scheme, the court heard.
The siblings lived together in a small two-bedroom flat in Brunswick House, a converted townhouse in London’s Marylebone area. Working from home during the pandemic meant he could easily share tips with her and co-ordinate the insider-trading operation.
Oerta, who was a director of a business providing recommendations on trading securities, conducted the first trades on her accounts.
A year later, Redinel Korfuzi persuaded de Aquino and Almeziad to open trading accounts, using the fact that de Aquino’s personal training business was struggling in the pandemic and the couple’s desire to save for a house as an incentive.
De Aquino would later tell the FCA in an interview that he and Almeziad were simply “two idiots” for trusting the Korfuzis and that they were taken in by Redinel’s “unique” intelligence. “This is the darkest [time] of my life,” he told investigators.
The Korfuzis ran a short-trading strategy — seeking to profit from the fall in a share price — placing trades often within 24 hours of Redinel obtaining the inside information on companies ranging from Jet2 to Daimler.
Still, even with the winning edge, trading decisions were often fraught as the siblings tried to optimise their profits.
In a WhatsApp conversation discussing a trade in Swiss testing company SGS in the early hours of February 4, 2020, Redinel told Oerta in Albanian to “stay ready because we have to close it if needed”.
“Open that crap of [sic] a phone” he added, when she hadn’t responded 11 seconds later.
Between September 2020 and March 2021 alone, the Korfuzis made £962,723 trading on 11 stocks. Across the indictment period, the siblings used inside information to place trades in at least 13 companies ahead of market announcements, according to the FCA.
“The truth is for the residents of Brunswick House there was never going to be enough money,” prosecutor Tom Forster KC said in a copy of his closing speech to the jury. “Arrogance, pride, entitlement and greed drove them on — and it has ruined them.”
The trial represented a swift fall from grace for Korfuzi who, alongside his profits from insider trading, was paid handsomely by his employer Janus Henderson — nearly £540,000, plus a share award of $80,000, in 2020 alone.
The beginning of the end came in the early hours of March 24 2021, when the police turned up at Brunswick House and arrested the siblings. Across London, de Aquino and Almeziad were also apprehended. The group was charged in 2023.
While the Korfuzi siblings declined to comment to the FCA in interviews, they both testified in court. The pair claimed that bundles of cash deposited in safety deposit boxes and bank accounts — often at multiple branches on the same day — were collection payments given to Redinel by UK clients of his father’s Albanian construction business.
Between January 2019 and March 2021, the group made 176 cash deposits of nearly £200,000.
“The explanation you are invited to accept as to the origin of these monies is that it was collected from four Albanian construction workers — two of whom were called Benni and Eri and represented purchase monies for flats built or going to be built (it was never clear),” Forster said of their defence in a copy of his closing remarks.
De Aquino and Almeziad did not testify.
Janus Henderson said in a statement after sentencing: “We are pleased that the proceedings related to this legacy matter have now concluded. Neither Janus Henderson, nor any other past or current employee of the firm, was the subject of the proceedings or accused of any wrongdoing.”
For the FCA, Operation Naples, as the investigation was named, represents a much-needed win as the regulator attempts to clean up trading across the City of London.
Nearly four in 10 UK takeovers were reported in the media before their announcement in the 14 months to May this year, according to a Financial Times freedom of information request to the FCA. The watchdog has issued warnings to bankers about leaks, which have come alongside an increase in unusual trading activity.
The FCA said on Tuesday that 38 per cent of UK corporate takeovers in 2024 caused a positive abnormal price movement in the two days before the deal was announced — indicating potential insider trading. That is up from a five-year average of 32 per cent.
“The siblings conspired together to use inside information to rig the system,” Steve Smart, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, told the FT.
He added: “When people trade based on confidential information, they’re abusing trust and gaining an unfair advantage — we will use all our powers to detect and disrupt those who try their luck.”
