Besieged Sydney property developer Jean Nassif has vowed to fight serious fraud accusations against him, claiming that a long-running investigation into his firm is a police fabrication on the instruction of corrupt commissioners and ministers.
In an explosive interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Nassif claimed he had been unfairly targeted by government and law enforcement, insisting allegations he and his daughter ran a sophisticated operation to deceive Westpac into approving a $150 million loan are false.
Jean Nassif and Ashlyn Nassif are accused of recycling presales contracts from one residential building to another to secure the Westpac cash facility.
The 55-year-old offered no evidence to support his claims of corruption but said serious accusations of financial crime against him were false.
“None of it is true. Nothing. I never did anything wrong,” he said. “It is a lie, a fabrication of the police officers, they’ve been instructed by certain commissioners and certain ministers.”
Mr Nassif spoke to the Herald on Thursday afternoon after he and his daughter Ashlyn Nassif were revealed as the targets of a police strike force investigating alleged financial crime by Mr Nassif as the director of developer Toplace.
The father-daughter duo are accused of using fraudulent documents to secure a $150 million Westpac cash facility for a five-tower residential development by Toplace in Castle Hill. Ms Nassif has since been charged with serious fraud offences. Mr Nassif has not been charged over the alleged scheme. However, a court has received documents referring to him as a co-accused.
Ashlyn Nassif arrives at her family home after being released on bail.Credit:Janie Barrett
Mr Nassif told the Herald he was now in the Philippines recovering from a medical procedure, after recently telling a parliamentary inquiry he was in rural Lebanon on a pre-planned holiday.
The developer said he would return home to Australia when he was well enough to travel, describing himself as “a very fair man”.
“I work 24 hours a day for 35 years. I’m a humble man. They, the media and those guys behind the scenes, they make me look like some fairytale man with no brain,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we have some corrupt ministers in the cabinet. I will chase them by law. I will put them behind bars. What they did to my family, to my wife and daughter. What does my wife and daughter have to do with my business?”
‘Unfortunately, we have some corrupt ministers in the cabinet. I will chase them by law.’
The comments come amid a contentious upper house inquiry which has hotly pursued Mr Nassif over extraordinary claims aired in parliament last year about allegations of impropriety at a council in Sydney’s north-west that ultimately benefited Mr Nassif’s company.
The probe examining NSW Liberals at Hills Shire Council triggered a statewide manhunt for witnesses, among them Mr Nassif, forcing the parliament to engage private investigators.
After the inquiry ended on Thursday, it was revealed that attempts by investigators to serve a summons on a witness were thwarted by police in a dramatic collision of NSW politics and business.
At 4pm on Tuesday, detectives were already raiding the Toplace office over the alleged financial crime, when process servers engaged by the NSW parliament attempted to serve a summons on right-wing Liberal powerbroker and Toplace CEO Jeff Egan.
The Hills Shire parliamentary inquiry has been keen for Egan to enlighten them on Toplace’s dealings in the Hills region, particularly with some elements of the Liberal party.
In its final report to parliament on Thursday, the inquiry found that Egan had “engaged in deliberate attempts to avoid giving evidence”.
A statewide search for three other Liberal party members – including Premier Dominic Perrottet’s brothers Charles and Jean Claude Perrottet, and Christian Ellis – failed to find any trace of them.
Charles Perrottet and Egan served together on the executive of the Liberal party’s NSW Local Government Oversight Committee.
The inquiry was triggered by allegations raised by NSW Liberal MP Ray Williams that senior members of his party had been “paid significant funds” to introduce new councillors who would support Nassif’s developments.
Egan, 52, also runs Flagship Communications which provides strategic advice to a wide variety of large corporations, councils and government departments.
Company records show that before they joined parliament, senior right-wing ministers David Elliott and Anthony Roberts were previous directors of Flagship and its earlier iteration National Training Consultancy.
There is no suggestion either has any connection to Mr Nassif.
While there is no mention of Toplace on Flagship’s website, Egan appears to have been involved with Toplace before his recent appointment as the company’s CEO.
In June 2019 Egan, in his role as “consultant” accompanied Mr Nassif to Parramatta Council in an attempt to overturn a stop work order issued because of Toplace’s unauthorised building work at 189 Macquarie Street, Parramatta.
Egan, a former Blue Mountains councillor and a one-time state executive of the NSW Liberal Party, is probably best known for his involvement in the fake pamphlets scandal during the 2007 federal election campaign.
The pamphlets purported to come from a radical Islamic group supporting the Labor Party and were being handed out in the federal seat of Lindsay. Another person nabbed was the husband of the unsuccessful Liberal candidate.
While Egan’s two accomplices were convicted and fined over the matter, Egan was acquitted by a magistrate on the grounds that while he handed out the pamphlets, he was unaware of their content.
Mr Nassif and his daughter are accused of recycling presales contracts from one residential building to another to secure a $150 million Westpac loan, using fraudulent documents lodged under the name of Toplace staff and subcontractors.
Police will also allege Mr Nassif used his units to offset outstanding invoices owed to subcontractors who had worked on his developments.
Financial crime detectives began zeroing in on Mr Nassif’s company Toplace in April 2021, launching an extensive investigation that has allegedly captured admissions from the businessman in secretly intercepted phone calls that the documents used were “fake”.
A court on Wednesday heard the charges against Ms Nassif were serious, given her job as a practising lawyer, and that her alleged actions formed part of a “sophisticated and planned” situation. Ms Nassif is banned from speaking to 24 people, including her father, after her family posted bail of $2.6 million.
A key condition for Westpac’s approval of progress payments was that Toplace complete $10.5 million, or 20 per cent, of presales in one of the buildings. All presales had to be conducted “at arm’s length” with 10 per cent deposits. The bank also required the contracts to be legal and binding, with “no side agreements”.
However, police will allege all qualifying presales linked to Toplace properties were created in breach of Westpac’s conditions because contracts were exchanged with an employee or subcontractor of Toplace, some of whom were close friends of Mr Nassif.
In lawfully intercepted phone calls, it is alleged that Mr Nassif requested the movement of contracts of sale from one building to another, admitting that the contracts are “fake” and “never going to be completed anyway”.
Investigators also claim that contracts supplied to the bank were simply reused from a different building in the Skyview development at Castle Hill, and that the financial benefit was used to purchase and hold new capital or sites for future developments.
Police will allege Ms Nassif has not derived any benefit from the progress payment claims, only that she worked in a joint criminal enterprise with her father, enabling him a financial advantage.
Ms Nassif is the managing partner of Sydney law firm EA Legal Pty Ltd, which is also named in the police investigation. It is alleged that the lawyer used a colleague to sign a solicitor’s undertaking that contracts given to Westpac were legitimate.
Mr Nassif told the Herald on Thursday that his daughter had been “doing her job and working hard”.
“She was the lawyer on the other side. She was instructed to enter into contracts for other people. And the contracts were fully, fully lawful,” he said.
Until recently the law firm was located in the same Concord building as the Toplace head office, which was one of four properties raided by police this week.
A Westpac spokesman said the bank had assisted NSW Police with their inquiries and that any Westpac lending remained “well secured against real estate assets”.
The developer boarded an Emirates flight from Sydney to Dubai on December 9, with a return ticket scheduled for January 29. However, he did not board the return flight home, nor a later flight booked for February 16.
Emirates has confirmed Mr Nassif does not have a current booking to return to Sydney.
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