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Cash transferred into bank accounts and safety deposit boxes by a former Janus Henderson fund manager was “absolutely not” linked to insider trading, but was for payments related to a family construction business, a London court heard.
Redinel Korfuzi, 37, and his co-defendants have been accused by the UK Financial Conduct Authority of laundering about £200,000 in cash generated through an insider dealing scheme that allegedly made the group about £1mn in total.
But he told the jury at Southwark Crown Court on Monday that the money was actually collected from UK clients of his father’s Albanian construction company and that it was “very, very normal” for an Albanian to receive and pay for things in cash.
“That cash initially I would sort of keep it at home and then when my father asked for it, I would send it to him . . . through bank transfer,” Korfuzi said in his first day on the stand. It was “absolutely not” from criminal activity, he insisted.
Korfuzi is charged alongside his sister, Oerta Korfuzi, 36, personal trainer Rogerio de Aquino, 63, and de Aquino’s girlfriend Dema Almeziad, 40, with one count of insider dealing and one count of money laundering between December 2019 and March 2021.
The Financial Conduct Authority accuses Korfuzi of using information he had obtained as an insider due to his former role at Janus Henderson to enable his co-conspirators to trade and make a profit.
Prosecutors allege that the group netted almost £1mn through illegal bets on share prices in 2020 and 2021 from trading positions taken out on personal accounts in companies including Jet2, Hargreaves Lansdown and THG. The money laundering offences relate to more than 170 cash deposits.
Korfuzi told the jury that he had grown up in Albania where his father worked as an engineer and later set up a construction company following the Albanian financial crisis in 1997. His mother was a paediatrician.
He came to the UK in 2006 to study, after which he started working at investment management firm Libra Equity in 2010, before joining Aquila Capital in 2013.
Korfuzi said his family would travel to the UK with cash, and that he had paid his rent and university fees in cash, which was “normal” given its high use as a method of payment in Albania.
The maximum penalty for insider dealing at the time the offences took place was seven years imprisonment, and 14 years for money laundering. The case continues.