Roxy Jacenko’s billionaire-to-be husband Oliver Curtis has delivered a frosty response about his ex-best mate who landed him in jail.

Curtis was convicted in June 2016 of insider trading using confidential information, and served 12 months of a two-year prison sentence.

The former investment banker was found guilty of using confidential tips provided by his old school chum John Joseph Hartman on 45 occasions.

The pair conducted their activities via encrypted messages on a BlackBerry phone between May 2007 and June 2008 to illegally trade on shifts in share prices.

Curtis and Hartman had been best mates at Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview, the elite private Jesuit boarding school on Sydney’s lower north shore.

Hartman flipped and turned his former best mate over to authorities, but was jailed, aged 25, in 2010 and served 15 months in prison.

Curtis was aged 30 when he was convicted, but was about 22 when he committed the offences.

Since his jailing, Curtis had not spoken publicly about Hartman – until this week when he was pressed about his ex-chum on Joe Aston’s Rampart Talks podcast.

Oliver Curtis has delivered a frosty response about his ex-best mate who landed him in jail

John Hartman (above) with wife Alice

Curtis on the way to court with wife Jacenko who wore $1,100 YSL suede lace-up heels and dressed in thousands of dollars’ worth of designer clothes during the three-week trial

Aston asked Curtis what he would do if he ran into his former buddy.

‘Look Joe, for me, I concentrate on myself, I don’t think about past as far as individuals are concerned,’ Curtis said.

Aston then pressed Curtis again and asked if he had ‘any sympathy’ for his ex-best mate, pointing out Hartman spent longer in jail while serving his time in a maximum-security prison.

‘As I said Joe, I don’t think about any individual around that time frame for any more than I need to,’ Curtis responded.

A lot was left unsaid when Curtis was asked what he would do if he ran into Hartman.

‘Not much probably, it is what it is, it’s the past,’ he said.

Aston also ‘brought up the elephant in the room’ and asked Curtis if he still maintained his innocence.

‘Well, look Joe, I mean, let’s just talk about some facts, it’s coming on 20 years ago okay?’ he said.

Roxy Jacenko (above) has stood by her husband

Hartman  (above) flipped and turned in his former best mate to authorities 

Curtis married Jacenko after he got out of prison 

‘I was a young man, a very young man for that matter, I was in a situation which meant I had little to no, kind of, people around me as far as what I was doing.

‘I was silly, I was stupid and I made a mistake.

‘I can tell you from the moment there was, I guess, the knock on the door, quite literally, and there was a (section) 128 enforcement order from ASIC, which is obviously just an investigative process.

‘Obviously I realised I’d done something gravely stupid.’

Curtis also told Rampart Talks he wished he had ‘listened to advice’ before engaging in the illegal conduct.

‘What I can tell you today, fast-forward 20 years, is if I had my time again of course I’d do different things, naturally,’ he said.

‘I absolutely know the impact this has had on my life, on my family’s life, on the business’s life for that matter.’

Curtis during his Riverview schooldays 

Hartman was Curtis’ best mate at Riverview

Curtis and Hartman were best mates at the Jesuit boarding school on Sydney’s lower north shore and fiercely followed its motto: ‘As much as you can do, so much dare to do’.

The pair grew up around money. Hartman’s father Keith was obstetrician to the billionaire Packer and Murdoch clans, while Curtis’s father Nick made his fortune in finance and mining rare earths.

Today, Hartman is CEO of multibillionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s private investment group Tattarang, responsible for managing assets worth more than $25billion.

Curtis, who married PR maven Jacenko after he walked from jail, has made his own remarkable return to business success, eight years after walking out of Cooma Correctional Centre in southern NSW.

It was recently reported that artificial intelligence start-up Firmus Technologies, which Curtis co-founded and co-chairs, had tripled its valuation to $6billion in the past two months.

Curtis and Hartman, both now 40, do not appear to have spoken on the public record about each other since their court cases.

Hartman with wife Alice and their children

Daily Mail made attempts in November to contact both men to ask whether the animosity so evident during Curtis’ trial had eased in the near-decade since. Each declined to comment. 

Curtis first attended Riverview in sixth class and Hartman one year later. Sometime after the Mosman neighbours came together in Year 7, they became inseparable.

After graduating, Hartman enrolled in a Bachelor of Economics at Sydney University, and in March 2006 began work as an equities dealer with Orion Asset Management aged 20. He lied to his employer about having already completed his studies.

Curtis, once a Cleo Bachelor of the Year finalist, got part-way through a degree before moving into investment banking as a junior financier with Transocean Securities.

He and Hartman caught up two or three times a week, dining out, sharing beers, playing squash and frequenting The Star casino. Both were heavy gamblers and, fatefully, they liked to chat about the stock market.

Curtis with his wife Roxy Jacenko and their children Pixie and Hunter

Courts would later hear Curtis used confidential information provided by Hartman on 45 occasions between May 2007 and June 2008 to illegally trade on shifts in share prices. Hartman provided tips and Curtis dealt with a stockbroker.

These trades resulted in a total net profit of $1,432,228.85, some of which was spent on a $19,380 black Ducati Sports motorcycle and a $72,000 dark silver Mini Cooper S convertible for Hartman.

Curtis paid a full year’s rent of $156,000 in early 2008 when he and his then-girlfriend, socialite Hermione Underwood, moved into a luxury apartment facing Bondi Icebergs along with Hartman.

More cash was outlaid on a holiday to the U.S. and Canada, which included a helicopter ride from the Whistler ski resort to Vancouver and a trip to the Spearmint Rhino strip joint in Las Vegas.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission caught up with Hartman first and he co-operated with investigators, agreeing to give evidence against Curtis in return for a 10 per cent sentence discount.

Curtis was taken away in handcuffs by prison officers after his conviction for insider trading for which he was sentenced to a maximum of two years 

After confessing to the financial services regulator, Hartman sought treatment for his gambling problems and spent two years working wage-free five days a week at an inner-city soup kitchen.

Hartman pleaded guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to 19 counts of insider trading and six offences of ‘tipping’ inside information to Curtis. He was jailed in December 2010, six months after meeting his future wife, Alice Clarke.

He had been out of jail four years when he gave evidence against Curtis at his Supreme Court trial in May 2016. 

Hartman did not return Curtis’s gaze when the defendant glared at him from the dock. He called Curtis a ‘big mouth’ and a ‘show-off’ with a gambling problem, still referring to him as ‘Oli’.

After her husband was taken away in handcuffs, Jacenko marched from the court to her waiting car, as security guards pushed media out of the way

Hartman told the jury he and Curtis knew what they were doing was wrong.

‘We both agreed we would be in a lot of s*** if this came out,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be just one of us.

‘I look back at it now, young 21-year-olds not believing it’s possible to make that sort of money so quickly, so easily,’ he said.

‘It was almost like it was some sort of game.’

Fast-forward to this week and Curtis said he was driven by the desire for ‘redemption’ for his crimes.

‘It’s definitely something for me,’ he admitted. 

‘The lessons of the past are learned and are something I am sure I am open about, and acknowledge and own.’