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The Continental Wealth Management (CWM), scandal is the latest to plague Spain’s ex-pat community.
It was a tale that had it all: a smorgasbord of greedy con men and women, extravagant spending on luxury villas and bling and – of course – hundreds of victims who lost their retirement savings.
The cast of mendacious villains who presented themselves as reputable and trustworthy ‘financial advisors’ has attracted such notoriety precisely because they seemed to get away with it.
Jody smart, CWM’s infamous director and expat, has received a lot of attention. She is the person who profited most from her role of ruining retirements for her compatriots.
READ MORE EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Costa Blanca’s €35m CWM pension fraud – as justice is finally served
Jody’s glamorous life as a jet set wedding planner, fashion design and restaurateur has been put on hold for now while she desperately fights off a three and a half year prison sentence handed down by the court in April.
It is less known about her former partner and the person who has been dubbed the main perpetrator and mastermind behind the fraud.
Darren Kirby, who had escaped the clumsy grasps of Spanish justice before everything fell apart, was thought to be somewhere in the breeze.
Olive Press was able to find the 60 year old, eight years after he founded CWM. They had a recorded conversation on what happened between 2009, the year he started CWM, and the collapse of the company in 2017.
He began by saying, “I need it for my soul because so many false things have been printed about me.”
But it’s still a long way off from a much-anticipated mea culpaKirby, on the other hand, launched a strident defense of his conduct at CWM.
“I would sacrifice my life for all people to get their money returned today […] but there was no fraud from my end, from CWM – and that includes Jody.”
Instead, he admitted he had been ‘negligent’ with whom he had trusted, and blamed the horrendous financial losses on a ‘lack of due diligence.’
READ MORE EXCLUSIVE: ‘Mastermind’ of CWM pension scandal denies wrongdoing as ex-partner is jailed in Spain
Out of around CWM 1,000 clients, Kirby estimated a third were seriously hit, with total losses totalling around €35 million.
“I will go and take a lie detector test anywhere in the world you choose – there was no fraud committed by CWM,” he insisted.
We were only the intermediaries, and we never received any money from the clients, as that is illegal.
Instead, he turned the conversation to pension trustee Momentum Pensions Malta ‘because they offered us the investment instruments.’
Kirby explained that CWM was guided by a list of what they could invest in, but Momentum ‘didn’t do their due diligence.’
“None of the pension providers do – this is a ticking time bomb that’s going to blow up the world, and now they’re going to work out who’s who in the zoo.
“We were an advisory group. We never gave any advice to a client, but we were guided by several companies worth a few million dollars. Then, you can get a better understanding of the trillions. They never carried out their due diligence.
“Why? It’s not about criminal fraud at all, but commissions and funds managed.
READ MORE MY SIGNATURE DOES NOT APPEAR: British fashion boss Jody Smart to appeal CWM fraud conviction denying ‘thousands of expats were affected’ in giant pension scam
We expected these people to be guided, as they offered the instruments.
“Double D – always do diligence, instead of chasing and trying to build a portfolio of funds under management.”
Kirby also cast doubt on the ‘low risk’ preference of the CWM clients who believed their pensions were being invested in safe ‘vanilla’ funds.
“It’s horrifying for anyone to believe there were fake signatures. Or that clients thought they were investing in vanilla funds but they weren’t.
“But buyers lie.” Perhaps the previous year they made money – then of course they didn’t complain.”
Kirby has not had a good run in the intervening decades, despite the huge wealth that was lost.
READ MORE Shock for hundreds of expat victims as court dismisses giant €35 million CWM pension fraud case
The former financial advisor has spent the last few years working £150 odd jobs in pub kitchens in the Maidenhead area between Reading and London.
Eyewitnesses have told the Olive Press that the one-time jet setter has been living off the grid virtually homeless, sleeping in his Ford Focus and ‘drinking a bottle of vodka a day.’
Kirby even reportedly confessed to co-workers that he had ‘lost €20 million’ and could no longer go to Spain as ‘the Guardia Civil are after me.’
One person, who did not want to be identified last year, said: “He’s done. He is history.”
Kirby told this newspaper that he had left Spain with ‘just €50 in my pocket – and that was given to me by a client.’
Continental Wealth Management has moved on from its opulent beginnings in the Costa Blanca Marriott Hotel Denia, where it began around 2009.
“I had the most stunning, beautiful offices for a fixed rent of about €2,000 a month with a five-year contract,” he explained.
READ MORE Jody smart, the fashion designer who was once linked to CWM, the scandalous pension firm on Spain’s Costa Blanca coast, received violent threats.
He explained that he had a ‘great reputation’ at the time, and quoted a reference he was given by ex-boss and Inter Alliance CEO Stephen O’Leary: “Undoubted – Darren Kirby is undoubted.”
Before the London Olympics of 2012, Kirby and Smart met while Smart was cleaning pools for Patrick’s brother.
It’s well known that they became an item, and Kirby says she soon ‘pushed to join the company.’
Meanwhile, Kirby hired Alan Goringe, an ‘out-and-out alcoholic’ and retired chartered accountant, as financial director ‘around 2013 or 2014′ on a salary of €35,000.
Kirby stated, “I didn’t realize that he was a drunk who drank boxes of cooking wines from the grocery store in his later years.”
Goringe was originally a defendant in the Denia trial against CWM. He died in 2019. The trial was dismissed in 2023 due to lack of evidence by the judge.
Yet, according to Kirby, CWM was running fine until he ‘started to get tired’ around 2015, and decided he wanted to ‘take a step back’ from the day-to-day running.
Kirby, acting on alleged legal advice from Vive Poms of the company, reformulated CWM into Continental Wealth Trust, and appointed Smart solely as director and administrator. Goringe was supposed to be the guiding hand at the wheel.
Curiously, Kirby also assigned his house, car and all the other assets he owned into Smart’s name ‘on the advice of the lawyers’ – items that she would later ‘asset strip’ from the bones of the company.
Smart would go on to accuse Kirby of deliberately – and coercively – setting her up as a patsy to take the rap when things fell apart.
Kirby’s response? “So now I have a crystal ball and thought if things go t**s up I’ll hand it over to her? “Get real.”
He added that CWM ‘never forced signatures as far as I know’ and Jody ‘never saw a client – I will protect her there.’
“She might have recommended them but she never talked to a client, took advice, or gave advice. That’s why I reiterate, not guilty before the law. I am not happy about her jail sentence.
When I was in charge, did we give bad advice? “No, I didn’t give bad advice when I was in charge.
He then continued, “I mean we obviously did.” [give bad advice], but it was not fraud. When I was running the company, we didn’t accept the pension of our clients and thought it would be fun to gamble.
“Even after I gave the money to Jody, a chartered account and walked out of the room they didn’t do anything. [commit fraud]We never see any money.
Many CWM clients recall Kirby making threats to them at the time CWM collapsed.
Kirby’s aggressive executives and salespeople pushed others into signing papers as dozens spoke publicly against Kirby.
But for Kirby, his real mistakes were to ‘take my eye off the ball’ and ‘entrust an alcoholic accountant and a dullard who I never loved to look after the company.’
“That is my fault.
“I’ll stand in the Royal Courts of Justice of London or Madrid and accept that responsibility.”
“And if God says, ‘you take two years, mate,’ it’s a release for me.”
The list of alleged crimes committed by the CWM staff, including Kirby and his associates is shocking.
The roll call of accomplices include family members Patrik and Dawn Kirby, plus portfolio manager Anthony Downs and Stephen Ward of ‘sister company’ Premier Pension Solutions.
There were also a host of allegedly unqualified advisers; Dean Stogsdill, Anthony Downs and Neil Hathaway at the ‘independent offshore investment firm’.
Momentum, which is affiliated with Inter Alliance, an international network of financial advisers and consultants, could not prove this to the Maltese regulator.
But perhaps the most appalling allegation is that CWM invested its clients retirement savings in high-risk ‘structured notes’, unsuitable for ‘retail investors’ and akin to gambling.
These investments paid out exorbitant fees and hidden commissions – automatically illegal – to CWM executives that came directly from the clients’ pension pots.
Kirby explained that the commission on the investment instrument could be around 7 – 8% and as high as 15%, taken from the client over a period of 5-8 years depending on the structure – but the figure was not set by himself or CWM.
We do not set commission rates. Fact.
There will be people who sell to make a commission in all areas of financial services. Some people will sell to protect the client, and others may do so for other reasons.
Several cases were eventually brought before the Maltese Arbiter for Financial Services – the jurisdiction in which many of the pension provider involved operated.
The Arbiter found that CWM did not have enough evidence to prove that it was licensed and regulated to provide investment advice. Momentum also failed in its duty of supervision over the investments made.
Momentum was ordered to pay out around £7 million to clients, while Kirby claimed to the Olive Press that CWM had paid out around €1.5 million to clients in compensation.
Kirby told The Olive Press that he continues to receive death threats even though he is 60 years old.
