‘You like?’ Jean Nassif’s $10m ice deal, zero regrets and one-way ticket out of trouble

″It is not a bribe!” Nissy Nassif proclaimed angrily when questioned over a frocks-for-favours incident involving a designer dress worth thousands of dollars that Nissy had gifted a reporter who had written a fawning piece about her.“Oh my god! I’ll tell you what a bribe is. A bribe is when someone is offered money in an envelope to write nasty, horrible things about someone, that’s what a bribe is!” she fumed to the Herald in April 2020.Fugitive developer Jean Nassif with his then-wife, Nissy. InstagramBut as his second wife was helpfully spelling that out, she couldn’t have known what her then-husband, dodgy developer Jean Nassif, was up to.For the past seven weeks, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard that Jean Nassif, 58, was paying money to a group of hard-Right Liberal operatives to obtain “nasty, horrible things” in an attempt to destroy the careers of his perceived adversaries: former Building Commission chief David Chandler and former police minister David Elliott.In one intercepted call in September 2021 between Nassif and Jean-Claude Perrottet, brother of former NSW premier, Dominic, Nassif is heard saying of Elliott: “I f---ed him sideways. I forced the boys to ah, ah, get rid of his branch at Baulkham Hills, you know?”The inquiry has heard that lobbyists Jeremy Greenwood and Christian Ellis, along with their friend Charles Perrottet, split $2 million of Nassif’s money that was paid by the banned donor to secure less than honourable political outcomes.Nassif’s money was allegedly washed through lobbying company Beckington under the guise of “government relations” work.“By early 2020, the Right faction’s ‘money train’ had already left the station and was on track to be an extremely lucrative journey because Mr Nassif, owner of Toplace, was on board,” counsel assisting the commission, Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC, said in her opening address.Senior counsel for the commission Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC.Sam MooyBut the question currently consuming ardent ICAC watchers is whether the notorious Nassif will appear before the inquiry.Nassif’s non-appearance seemed to be a given back in late July when Operation Rosny began its public hearings.Dwyer said in her opening address that Nassif had fled to Lebanon in December 2022. “We note that a warrant for his arrest has been issued by police in relation to allegations of criminal fraud. He has spoken to various media outlets since he left to vigorously defend himself, but he has declined an invitation to assist the commission.”However, there was a flurry of excitement when Nassif’s name suddenly appeared on the witness list to provide evidence from Lebanon by an audio-visual link on Friday, September 4. Hopes were then dashed after Nassif provided a medical certificate excusing himself from appearing.The Banquo’s ghost haunting this inquiry is now listed to make his ICAC debut on Monday.Since his previously cancelled appearance, excoriating details about his general character and his parenting skills were laid bare at his daughter’s sentencing for fraud-related offences last Monday.She had entered a guilty plea to falsifying pre-sale contracts for the Skyview Apartments in Castle Hill to help her father obtain a $150 million bank loan from Westpac.Ashlyn Nassif (left) leaves Burwood Local Court after pleading guilty in June.AAPIMAGEIn March 2023, when news broke of his daughter’s arrest, Nassif in Lebanon angrily protested his innocence to the Herald, saying: “None of it is true. Nothing. I never did anything wrong … It is a lie, a fabrication of the police officers, they’ve been instructed by certain commissioners and certain ministers.“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?”However, it was his treatment of his daughter that was highlighted at Ashlyn’s recent sentencing proceedings.“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.Nassif’s former employees said they witnessed the “foul-mouthed” and abusive behaviour of Nassif towards his daughter on an almost daily basis.“She was under the sway of her tyrannical father. We are dealing with a young solicitor who made a stupid choice which ruined her life,” Judge Christopher Halburd said. He sentenced Ashlyn Nassif, who had already lost her ability to practise law, to a six-month intensive corrections order.Evidence alleging Nassif’s abusive and controlling behaviour was raised in May 2022 when the developer was charged with assaulting Nissy at their home. Police alleged Nassif punched his wife “three or four times in the face” and that he had verbally abused her and dragged her across the floor.In her statement to police, Nissy said she was “scared for her life”.But Nissy was a no-show when the case came to court in July 2022 and the charges against her husband were dropped.Nissy, who has reverted to her maiden name Matta, has since divorced Nassif, whom she has accused of “physically, emotionally and financially” abusing his family and of abandoning them with no support.Even her famous yellow Lamborghini has been repossessed. On Valentine’s Day 2019, Nassif posted the now infamous video in which he says “Congratulations, Mrs Nassif. You like?” as he presented her the $480,000 set of wheels.The yellow Lamborghini and its owner, Nisserine Nassif, in 2019.Instagram Police had been investigating Nassif since mid-2021 for suspected money laundering and fraud offences. The ICAC was the recipient of material intercepted by police about Nassif’s alleged politically corrupt activities.On October 6, 2021, the day after Dominic Perrottet was sworn in as NSW premier, the police intercepted a call Nassif had with another developer who was having his own troubles with the building regulator.“My time, my time is just start ah now, today ... And the next three years, I’m gonna excel in Sydney, because I covered myself politically,” Nassif boasted.Earlier in the call, he described the building commissioner as a “c---“, adding, “But I’m gonna step on his neck and strip him from his job. Just give me two months …I’m gonna f--k him sideways.”Around this time, another Perrottet brother, Charles, along with Labor Party figure and Nassif’s right-hand man, Sharangan Maheswaran, were allegedly attempting to have Chandler removed from office by peddling false information from Nassif that the building commissioner was corrupt.Like many other inflated claims by Nassif, including his fake university degrees, this one about excelling in Sydney turned out to be very, very wrong.On February 28, 2023, NSW police raided Nassif’s Concord office and his waterfront Chiswick home, where they found $200,000 in cash in Nissy’s handbags and inside a wardrobe. She later abandoned her attempts to have the seized funds returned.Also raided that day was the city office of EA Legal, the law firm run by Evelyn and Ashlyn, Nassif’s two daughters from his first marriage. Ashlyn was arrested later that same day over her role in falsifying pre-sale contracts to help her father secure the $150 million loan.In intercepted phone calls, Nassif was heard admitting the contracts are “fake” and “never going to be completed”.By the time police issued a warrant for Nassif’s arrest in June 2023, he’d already fled to Lebanon. He left Sydney on December 9, 2022, the day after NSW Parliament announced an inquiry into his funding of Liberal Party operatives, in breach of electoral funding laws, to achieve political outcomes that he thought could smooth the way for his troubled developments, which had been hit with stop work orders by Chandler.Former NSW building commission chief David Chandler.Sitthixay DitthavongDays after Nassif left the county, 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.Ashlyn was just one month old when Jean and his older brothers Sarkis and Bakhos (Joseph) started their company Oz Leb Development, which later changed its name to Holdmark Developers in 1998.The brothers appeared to go their separate ways around 2008. Nassif set up his own construction company Toplace in 2009. He had already fled to Lebanon when Toplace collapsed in July 2023 with debts of about $1.6 billion.However, Nassif appeared to have been siphoning money offshore before Toplace collapsed. In January 2019, one of Nassif’s companies took $10 million from the Westpac loan facility and deposited it into a Lebanese bank account belonging to Nassif’s brother Bakhos.In 2018, another $7 million of company funds were used to purchase land in Lebanon, while $1.3 million was spent on a “warehouse project” in Nigeria.One set of administrators reported that their investigations “have uncovered a myriad of interrelated company loans, creditors, and payments from Bankstown to Beirut”.“There is more to this than meets the eye, which I am not prepared to go into,” Nassif’s lawyer Rebekah Giles said in 2019, when her client Nassif pleaded guilty to cocaine charges after the high-roller was caught with the prohibited drug on his way into Sydney’s The Star casino.Nassif was given an 18-month conditional release order and no conviction was recorded on account of his good character.Giles might have been referring to her client’s belief that it was the police minister who had orchestrated his arrest.Giving evidence last month, Elliott told counsel assisting the commission that he was aware that Nassif had blamed him for his arrest at the casino. “Now, I can assure you, Dr Dwyer, if I’d asked the NSW Police Force to issue a parking ticket, they would punch me in the neck.”A fellow high-roller at The Star casino has told the Herald that Nassif was regularly “drinking, doing coke and smoking cigars” as he played the slot machines within the Sovereign Room, a private VIP room for high-rollers.He said Nassif would come into the casino carrying a Louis Vuitton duffle bag containing cash. Nassif allegedly gambled for several hours, several days per week, regularly gambling up to $250,000 per day, the high-roller observed.The Herald has previously revealed that in April 2021, Nassif allegedly supplied couriers with 10 kilograms of the drug ice to be delivered to Perth. The couriers were arrested at the handover.During the 2024 trial of courier Mathew Peagram, the West Australian District Court heard that in a pre-dawn meeting at Nassif’s development site in Castle Hill, Nassif handed over a Nike sports bag of methamphetamine with an estimated street value of $10 million.He also provided the couriers with encrypted Ciphr phones and thousands of dollars in cash as “spending money” for the journey. Peagram, who was told the bag contained foreign currency, was assigned the codename “Picasso”.“Nassif was in charge and did all the talking. I didn’t ask any questions about the bag, as I assumed he was doing something illegal with the currency,” Peagram alleged.In 2024, the two couriers were each sentenced to a maximum of 11 years and six months’ jail.Judge Mara Barone said that although they were instructed “to deliver foreign currency from Mr Nassif” the pair later became aware it was the drug ice, yet they chose to continue.Nassif has denied any involvement in the drug supply matter.“I am a man of honour, a fighter, one of God’s warriors. I am the voice that screams very high against evil forces,” Nassif told reporters in 2023 after his arrest warrant was issued over the fraudulently obtained Westpac loan. “I will be back to defend myself and the truth will always prevail.”Whether Nassif and his money train of truisms will ever pull into the ICAC station remains to be seen.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.