My husband left and told me he’d become a bus driver. I found him in a [pounds sterling]1m apartment in Singapore, living with the ex Mrs Phil Tufnell; DETECTIVE WORK: Helen, left, at her home near Brighton. Above, Alison Tufnell – she had a hard-faced look, says Helen WEDDING DAY: Helen and Simon Sywak marry in Sydney in 1997. I was smitten by him, she says
0 Comments | Mail on Sunday (London, England), The, June 8, 2008
Byline: CLAUDIA JOSEPH
WHEN high-flying banker Simon Sywak decided he no longer wished to payfor the upkeep of his former wife and two young children, he came up with amost unusual ruse. Mr Sywak told his family and the courts he had left theworld of large bonuses and flashy cars and was retraining to be a bus driver.
Last week, however, this dramatic change of career was exposed as a sham,thanks to an 18-month investigation mounted by his furious former wife, who wasdemanding his maintenance payments. Helen Sywak tracked him down not to anoil-stained bus depot or staff canteen, but a luxurious [pounds sterling]1 million apartment inSingapore, where he was living with his new wife – former prostitute AlisonTufnell, the ex-wife of cricketer and TV personality Phil Tufnell.
Although he claimed to be almost penniless after his career change andtherefore unable to pay maintenance, 37-year-old Mr Sywak was, in fact, asenior figure with JP Morgan Chase, one of the most influential merchant banksin the world.
Today, sitting in her seafront home in Sussex, 43-year-old Helen is stillreeling at the audacity of her former husband’s claims.
‘It sums up the arrogance of the man,’ she says. ‘He used British justice totry and pay no maintenance. Now he’s hiding from the courts. Not for a seconddid I believe he was a bus driver. He’s a massive spender.
It was ridiculous and naive.’ Helen, a Cambridge graduate, admits she shouldhave known better when she met Simon, a handsome Australian banker, in 1996. Asa female broker, one of just a handful in the City of London, she knew allabout the mix of testosterone and booze that fuelled her colleagues. And Sywakalready had a reputation for hard drinking by the time they met.
But she was young, attractive and successful. She had just qualified as afutures broker at the Prudential-Bache finance house in the City of London and,as she readily admits, was looking for adventure.
Simon Sywak seemed to fit the bill. He was working on the night desk at thecompany’s Sydney office and she was immediately drawn to the confidence andcocky charm of his regular telephone calls to the London office.
‘Nobody else wanted to talk to him when he rang through because he was soarrogant,’ she recalls.
‘But I was intrigued. He would phone on Monday mornings and tell me about hisantics such as joining the mile-high club in the private helicopter of amillionaire’s wife and being comatose and thrown out of the Sydney RAC Club. Itshould have set alarm bells ringing but it didn’t. He was brilliant at tradingand I was incredibly impressed.’ She went out to see him, was smitten and inNovember 1997 they married at Sydney Register Office, starting a glamorous newlife in Australia.
‘I really loved him,’ she says. ‘He was fantastically interesting and a bizarrepersonality. He was addicted to risk. It was very exciting.’ SHE did not haveto wait long, though, for the glamour to pall.
Helen claims she quickly went from cherished girlfriend to abused wife asSywak’s behaviour became progressively more drunken and aggressive.
Anxious to save the marriage, they moved back to England in 1998.
But the problems plaguing the relationship soon re-emerged, she says.
On one occasion he ran up a [pounds sterling]1,000 credit-card bill in a lapdancing club, eventhough, with Simon in and out of work, the couple were hard-up.
Then in 2003, with the family living in Brighton, Helen complained to thepolice that her husband had assaulted her, knocking her over in a struggle sothat she dropped head first on to the stone floor of the kitchen. Fearing hewould lose the job he had acquired by then, she did not press charges.
They finally separated in May 2004, and by August, Helen was petitioning fordivorce. With both sides acknowledging the relationship was over, things seemedto progress smoothly. Helen could dream of a fresh start with their sons Jack,nine, and Freddie, eight, and had agreed that Simon could see the childrenregularly.
The amicable approach though was soon to change, and drastically. And the firstsign, says Helen, was when her former husband teamed up with Alison Tufnell.
‘I first met her outside my children’s school,’ Helen says. ‘Quite honestly,she looked so hard that I had no idea she was with him. As I walked up the roadwith the boys, she and Simon seemed to laugh at me as they drove past in afourwheel-drive, so I realised that she must be the new girlfriend.’ It wasthen that Helen discovered an astonishing fact: Simon’s new girlfriend was notonly a former prostitute, but had recently broadcast the fact in the nationalPress.
Famous in her own right as the first wife of a high-profile England cricketinternational, Alison sold her story in 2004, explaining in detail how she hadbeen an ‘escort’ girl for the rich and famous, including a Greek shippingtycoon, a Saudi Prince and the Duke of Devonshire.
‘It was my mother who found out first,’ says Helen. ‘She remembered somethingabout the name Alison Tufnell and had looked her up on the internet. I lookedfor myself and I nearly fell off my chair
hardfacing perth
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