Barbs and bluster from the Beirut bedroom of ‘The Fugitive’ Jean Nassif

The current explosive NSW corruption inquiry appears to have a worldwide audience, including someone regularly dialling in from Lebanon.

It turns out that the “someone” is notorious developer Jean Nassif, also known as “The Fugitive” on account of him fleeing the country in December 2022. There is a warrant out for his arrest over allegations of serious fraud offences.

Jean Nassif gives evidence from his Beirut bedroom.ICACHopefully, there was no one asleep in Nassif’s house at 7am local time as the developer gave evidence – in a most vigorous fashion – from his Beirut bedroom.

Within minutes of “swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, Nassif was making wild accusations before the Independent Commission Against Corruption against former police minister David Elliott, whom he claimed was “a racist person … a corrupt politician”.

Nassif also said that Elliott was running a mafia operation in Parramatta and Baulkham Hills to stop his developments.

Elliott has given evidence that he merely raised his constituents’ concerns about the defects in the Toplace buildings.

David Elliott after his ICAC appearance on August 20.Peter RaeNassif then launched an attack on former radio broadcaster Ray Hadley, accusing him of “lying and talking bullshit without evidence” about the defects in Nassif’s Toplace apartments.

“It is a LIE!” shouted the bearded Nassif, pulling down his neatly pressed white shirt, which had risen up in alignment with his growing agitation.

He insisted that his company always took care of defects; any remaining ones were the fault of the various body corporates running his apartment buildings, Nassif said crossly.

“Ray Hadley, David Elliott, David Chandler – they are one person! They are crook!” he fumed in his evidence to the ICAC.

Now in week eight, the ICAC has heard that Nassif, 58, was paying money to a group of hard-Right Liberal operatives, Jeremy Greenwood, Charles Perrottet and Christian Ellis. The inquiry has heard that $2 million, which was washed through Ellis and Greenwood’s lobbying firm, was allegedly used to stack local Liberal branches, damage the political career of Elliott and to try to remove the building commissioner, Chandler.

Nassif continually interrupted the questions of counsel assisting Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC, in what appeared to be an attempt to steer his examination back to his own grievances.

Dwyer remained unflustered and, at one point, referred him to a text message shown to the inquiry between “the boys” complaining about Nassif not paying: “So I don’t mean to be hurtful, Mr Nassif, but the person they’re referring to as a ‘f---wit’ there is you.”

Nassif had been whingeing that “the boys”, as he called Ellis and Greenwood, had promised to take care of the media reporting on the defects in his buildings, but they had taken his money and done nothing. “They told me lots of bullshit,” he said.

But he was just talking “nonsense” when he was taken to his own intercepted phone calls in which he was big-noting to his friend that he had “f---ed David Elliott … I took his seat”. He also said in Arabic in one call that he had paid a lot of money to get the numbers to control the executive of the NSW Liberal Party.

Nassif’s development company, Toplace, collapsed in 2023 with debts of $1.6 billion but not before Nassif himself siphoned off more than $10 million, sending the funds to Lebanon.

Toplace, which was once described in parliament as a “dodgy developer” with “one of the worst records in the residential building industry”, was slapped with a prohibition order by the building commissioner in 2021, preventing the company from selling apartments until it fixed serious defects at its Skyview development at Castle Hill.

Days after Nassif left the country, NSW Fair Trading stripped his building licence for 10 years, and Toplace’s licence was permanently revoked for failing to rectify a litany of defects.

Nassif’s colourful background includes a conviction for cocaine possession, and it has been alleged in a West Australian court that Nassif was involved in a $10 million methamphetamine deal in 2021. The couriers Nassif used were sentenced to more than 11 years’ jail each for their involvement. Nassif has denied any involvement.

Only last week, his daughter, Ashlyn, 32, was sentenced to a six-month intensive correction order after pleading guilty to her part in her father’s fraud in falsifying pre-sale contracts for the Skyview Apartments in Castle Hill to help her father obtain a $150 million bank loan from Westpac.

“How any person could leave their child to face charges which are for his company’s benefit? How he could leave her to fend for herself, sell her property for legal fees,” her barrister, Murugan Thangaraj, SC, told the Burwood Local Court.

It will be back to Nassif’s bedroom on Tuesday afternoon, Sydney time.

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