THE Continental Wealth Management (CWM) scandal has been one of the most sordid to dog Spain’s expat community in recent years.
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.
Much of the focus has been on CWM director and infamous expat Jody Smart, the one who most visibly profited from her role in ruining the retirements of hundreds of her fellow compatriots.
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But Jody’s fabulous life as a jet-set wedding planner, fashion designer and restaurateur is currently on hold while she desperately tries to fight off a three-and-a-half year jail sentence for fraud handed down in April.
Much less is known, however, about the fortunes of her ex-partner and the figure often fingered as the mastermind and principal culprit behind the fraud.
Darren Kirby was believed to be in the wind, having escaped the clumsy clutches of Spanish justice when everything eventually fell apart.
But the Olive Press managed to track the 60-year-old down, eight years later, for an on-the-record conversation about what really happened in those heady years between 2009, when he founded CWM, and its collapse in 2017.
“I need this for my soul, because there’s been so many wrong wrongs printed about me,” he began.
But far from making a long-awaited mea culpa, Kirby instead launched a strident defence of his conduct with CWM.
“I would give my life today for everyone to get their money back […] 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 the intermediary, we never received the clients’ money ever, because that’s 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 a financial advisory group, we never gave advice to any client but were guided by a series of companies that collectively are worth a couple of trillion. But they never did their due diligence.
“Why? It’s not criminal fraud exactly, it’s about commission, and funds under management.
“When we sent these portfolio funds off to these people, we expected them under guidance, because they were the ones that 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 is horrendous for anyone to think there were forged signatures, or clients thinking they were going into vanilla funds when they weren’t.
“But buyers are liars. Perhaps the previous year they made money – then of course they didn’t complain.”
Despite the great wealth that went missing, the intervening years have not been kind to Kirby.
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.’
“He’s finished, the guy is history,” said one individual last year who asked not to be named.
Kirby told this newspaper that he had left Spain with ‘just €50 in my pocket – and that was given to me by a client.’
It’s a far cry from the plush setup in the Costa Blanca Marriott Hotel in Denia where Continental Wealth Management started off all those years ago 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.
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.”
Some time before the London Olympics in 2012, Kirby met Smart while she was working as a pool cleaner for his brother Patrick.
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.
“I didn’t know at that time that he was an alcoholic who ended up drinking boxes of cooking wine from the supermarket in the latter days of his life,” Kirby claimed.
Goringe, who died in 2019, was initially a co-defendant in the Denia fraud trial against CWM. The judge eventually dismissed it in 2023 for a lack of evidence.
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.
Acting on alleged advice from company lawyers Vives Pons, Kirby reformulated CWM as Continental Wealth Trust and appointed Smart as sole director and administrator, with Goringe the supposed guiding hand on the tiller.
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 forged signatures as far as I know’ and Jody ‘never saw a client – I will protect her there.’
“She may have recommended them, but she never spoke to a client or took advice or gave advice, which is why I stress again, not guilty in the court of law. Her jail sentence gives me no pleasure.
“Did we give bad advice when I was in charge? No, we didn’t when I handed it over.
He continued: “I mean, we obviously did [give bad advice], but there was no fraud. We didn’t take the client’s pension when I was in charge of the company and think we’d have a little gamble.
“Even when I handed over to a chartered accountant and Jody and walked away, they still didn’t [commit fraud], because it’s impossible as we never see the money.”
However, numerous CWM clients around the time of its collapse recalled receiving threatening phone calls from Kirby.
Others spoke of being pushed into signing papers by Kirby’s aggressive team of executives and salespeople as dozens of people spoke out publicly against Kirby and CWM.
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’s my failure, that’s my fault.
“I will stand there in the court of law, in the Royal Courts of Justice in London or Madrid, and take that responsibility.
“And if God says, ‘you take two years, mate,’ it’s a release for me.”
Regardless of whether fraud took place with or without Kirby’s knowledge, the list of offences that the CWM staff and associates allegedly perpetrated is hair-raising.
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’.
Although Kirby’s claimed it was licenced to operate through its membership of Inter Alliance, a network of financial advisers, Momentum could not prove it to the Maltese financial 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 the commission rates. Fact.
“In every world, in every facet of financial services, there’s going to be people out there that will sell for commission. There will be some people that sell to protect their client and everything in between.”
A series of cases were brought eventually before the Maltese Arbiter for Financial Services (OAFS), the jurisdiction where many of the pension providers involved operated.
The Arbiter largely found that there wasn’t enough proof that CWM was regulated and licensed to give investment advice, while Momentum didn’t adequately supervise the types of investments being 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 to do this day he still receives death threats and that his life is effectively over at the age of 60.