Rurik Jutting blew £1,000 a night on champagne, cocaine and hookers

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Double murderer Rurik Jutting’s ‘epic partying’ may have led him into a dark world of cocaine abuse, prostitutes and sexual sadism — but in the bankers’ playground of Hong Kong the thrill-seekers are still going strong.

There appears to be no let up in the ‘work hard, party hard’ mantra of young, single men, who flash their platinum Amex cards in fashionable bars where £200 bottles of champagne are handed out like water.

As the most gruesome murder trial in Hong Kong’s history was at its height, MailOnline even found bankers joking about the twisted 31-year-old who tortured two sex workers to death, as others knocked back flaming cocktails and played pool at tables plated in gold.

One man referred to the sadistic Cambridge graduate as a ’12’ — a derogatory term used to describe any ugly British ex-pat with a young Asian sex worker on his arm.The man ranks as a two while the woman is a ten.

The trial of former public schoolboy Jutting, who was convicted of murdering Indonesians Sumarti Ningsih, 23,  and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, in a three-day orgy of violence, has thrown a spotlight onto the ‘wild east’ ex-pat lifestyle many enjoy in Hong Kong.

And today one banker who worked with Jutting told how he felt a sense of guilt that nothing was done to stop the warped trader’s spiral into madness.

‘Someone should have got involved — we are all partly to blame,’ said the former colleague, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jutting moved from London in 2013 to join a male-dominated trading floor in Hong Kong for Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML).Somehow the Cambridge-educated banker went from a role model who made vast sums with his high-risk trades to a drug addict struggling to juggle his depraved habits with his high pressure job.

A banker who claimed he personally knew Jutting said it was ‘part of the tragedy’ that no one intervened to help the Briton before the murders.

But he added: ‘It would have been impossible to predict that Rurik was going to commit a double murder.

‘He had a big drug and alcohol problem.He was a sadistic and frequent client of the prostitutes at sex clubs in Hong Kong and Macau.’

Consuming ever greater quantities of cocaine and alcohol, Jutting descended into increasingly violent abuse of prostitutes. 

‘Suddenly taking home prostitutes wasn’t enough of a thrill (for Jutting),’ the colleague said.’It was all about bondage and humiliation of the girls — pouring burning wax on them and using whips.

‘Rurik was a thrill seeker and the quest to treat the girls more extremely, coupled with the drugs he was on may have contributed to the tragedy that happened.’ 

Jutting worked in the high-risk trading area called structured equity financing and specialised in making multi-hundred million US dollar loans to tycoons in Asia secured by stocks in their firms, it was claimed.

»The trades that Rurik specialised in were some of the biggest gambles in the trading world of investment banks.

‘He was working with some significant business tycoons and business founders, taking a mortgage on their positions.He would have met a lot of significant clients.

‘Rurik must have felt under pressure.’ 

The colleague described Cambridge graduate Jutting as ‘very smart, very aggressive, brash and occasionally very shouty’ but insecure and constantly seeking reassurance from management.

‘Like a lot of these young guys, he wasn’t seasoned enough to be truly secure about what he was doing from a market risk perspective,’ he said.

While Jutting’s stock within BAML rose, however, so did his ‘epic partying’, the colleague said.

Jutting would start his evenings in upmarket bars in Hong Kong’s Bentley-lined Wyndham Street where champagne in clubs like the Tazmanian Ballroom and iDragon sells for hundreds of pounds a bottle while African drug dealers openly sell cocaine for £80 a gram in the street outside.

Later, he would head to the sleazier Wan Chai red light district a 10 minute cab ride away to venues like Waikiki nightclub and New Makati Pub and Disco bar, where girls go home with wealthy customers for sex at £200 a time.

‘He will have always been living in fear of screwing up a big trade and losing money and having it all come crashing down on him’. 

At his trial, it emerged that before calling police after his second murder on November 1, 2014, Jutting phoned an unnamed boss at BAML and told him: ‘I am in a lot of trouble, you need to do something about the reputation of the bank.’ 

The colleague said there had been ‘a collective shudder’ through BAML when Jutting was arrested for the two murders. 

‘We had a young guy who was really going off the rails and was starting to get very anti-social in his behaviour. People are still in such a state of shock. 

‘The day after the news came out, they came in and pulled the whole trading floor together.

‘They did offer counselling to people who wanted it.’

On the partying scene, however, it appears little has changed. 

Exotic cocktails and bottles of vodka topped with sparklers light up the gloom of clubs like the Tazmania Ballroom, set in one of the steep streets of the Lan Kwai Fong district.

It is here that the serious partying starts on a Friday night when the financial markets close and 70 of the world’s largest banks shut down for the weekend.

Clubs like Tazmania were a favoured haunt of Jutting, 31, where he would spend his early evenings gorging on champagne and bottles of San Miguel beer.

He would then take a £2 cab ride across the city to the sleazy Wan Chai red light district in search of sex from Fillipino and Indonesian girls.

In Lan Kwai Fong, or LKF as it’s known among expats, the pavement outside the 80 bars and clubs were packed last Friday night with bankers still dressed in their £1,500 Hugo Boss suits.

Many are happy to stand around chatting, winding down after a 100-hour week having worked on financial deals that run into the millions.

With many earning over £150,000 a year, and paying only 15% income tax, they have plenty of money to spend.

Inside Tazmania groups of bankers sit round chatting loudly on sofa, most are English but a few American accents can be heard as well.

In one corner two tables groan from empty vodka and champagne bottles and as the evening wears on the men get more raucous.

The group of about ten are celebrating a colleague’s birthday and £150 bottles of Grey Goose vodka are brought to the table with flames shooting from the top.

Slices of chocolate cake go untouched as the group, which includes two women, shout at each other over the din of the music.

One banker can be overheard talking about the Jutting trial taking place and mocking the killer banker by describing him as a ’12’.

This is the derogatory term used to describe any ugly British ex-pat with a young Asian sex worker on his arm.The man ranks as a two while the woman is a ten.

Barmen do a brisk trade in Veuve Clicquot champagne, which sells for $1950HK a bottle — about £200.

‘You always known when a big deal has been made as the champagne is the first thing ordered,’ said a barman.

‘A lot of them have expenses accounts and just hand over a credit card.I’ve seen bills running into the tens of thousands, but they don’t care.’

It is not just male bankers who like to let rip after work hours.

On the balcony overlooking the LKF streets four women smoked and drank cocktails, shouting out to friends as they walked past.

The club’s signature cocktail is called ‘Funk Me Up’ and is made up of Amaretto, Chambord, Malibu, Midori and vodka.

Like others on the extensive menu it sells for about £13 while a bottle of beer is £10.

Since opening, the Tazmania has remained one of the most popular hangouts for bankers to let off steam and features gold plated pool tables in the centre of the room.

One night a week ping pong tables are set up.

The tables are hoisted in the air so that the space can be used as a dance floor.

Across the road is another popular hangout, the Dragon i club, which attracts a glamorous crowd made up of models and seriously rich banking executives.

Many of the blonde women are from the Ukraine and Russia, standing at the bar waiting to be bought drinks.

Bosses and colleagues of Jutting at Bank of America Merrill Lynch have refused to comment on the Jutting case and no one from the bank gave testimony or character references on his behalf in court.

The scandal involving Jutting is the second involving the same bank to expose the hedonistic culture of expatriate bankers in the Far East playground of Hong Kong.

In a notorious 2003 case known as the Milkshake Murder, Merrill Lynch banker Robert Kissel was murdered by his wife Nancy after she served him a strawberry milkshake laced with sedatives.

At her trial, Kissel portrayed her American husband as a cocaine and alcohol-addicted wife beater who regularly paid for prostitutes and who raped and sodomised her over a five-year period in the run-up to the murder. 

Despite the embarrassment of the Kissel case, bankers’ out-of-hours excesses in Hong Kong remained unchecked.In the aftermath of the Jutting murders, police reacted by rounding up scores of Indonesian sex workers rather than targeting sex club customers or cocaine dealers. 

Friends of Jutting’s first victim Sumarti Ningsih, 26, who was butchered and left in a suitcase, meanwhile, have been racked with guilt for not preventing her from falling into the hands of a killer who tortured her horrifically for three days before her death.

Three weeks after Jutting’s arrest, an Indonesian sex worker known as Sarah (not her real name) who was the best friend of Sumarti was rescued by police as she threatened to throw herself off a seven-storey apartment block.

On the Sunday before mother-of-one Sumarti’s disappearance, Sarah and Sumarti were among a group of a dozen women who shared a dim sum meal with Jutting at a restaurant in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui district.

One of the women present at the meal said: ‘Rurik had spent the night before with Sumarti and she had vivid bruising up the side of her neck.

‘I took her to one side and asked her about it and she told me Rurik liked to strangle her during sex.He also liked to hit her. She said it was something he enjoyed doing.’

Jutting and Sumarti argued openly at the lunch, the woman said. ‘Sumarti was obviously very unhappy with Rurik,’ she said.

‘He kept telling her to go home with him at the end of the meal but she refused to go and told him he treated her badly.I think she left alone, without him.’ 

Five days later, Sumarti was reluctantly persuaded by Jutting to go to his flat.In the days that followed, Sarah posted increasingly desperate Facebook messages asking for help in finding Sumarti.

Chillingly, Sarah even messaged Jutting asking if he had seen Sumarti. Jutting — who was in the process of subjecting Sumarti to three days of torture before cutting her throat — replied that he had not seen her, she later told friends. 

Her sad suicide bid three weeks after Sumarti’s death suggests Sarah found it almost unbearable to live with the guilt.