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In January 2023, Matthew Blackmore, the then-independent mayor of Strathfield, took notes of an extraordinary meeting with Labor councillor Sharangan Maheswaran, who informed him that for the last five months he had been trailed by a private investigator who secretly recorded meetings at cafes and pubs.
A shocked Blackmore told colleagues that Maheswaran’s fellow Labor colleague Karen Pensabene was also present at this meeting, where Maheswaran told Blackmore he needed to relinquish the mayoralty. If he failed to comply, Maheswaran threatened to release material to the media which would make the mayor look bad.
This allegation that “Strathfield Councillors Sharangan Maheswaran and/or Karen Pensabene” tried to blackmail the mayor is just one of the explosive allegations that the Independent Commission Against Corruption will examine at its forthcoming inquiry, codenamed Operation Rosny.
This, however, was not Maheswaran’s only link to the dark arts of political persuasion which ICAC will examine. Not only did the former Strathfield councillor have links to fugitive property developer Jean Nassif, he was also close to several of the Liberal powerbrokers who allegedly did Nassif’s bidding by branch-stacking the Hills Shire Council to install people who would be more amenable to approving Nassif’s questionable developments.
A Herald investigation can also reveal Maheswaran’s links to attempts to destroy NSW building commissioner David Chandler and damage the reputation of then-police minister David Elliott, who was also a vocal critic of Nassif’s.
Maheswaran is a long-time ALP member who joined Young Labor while studying law at Sydney University. He was highly active in student politics, sources who knew him at university say, and he later sounded out Labor powerbrokers about running in the federal seat of Reid and the state seat of Strathfield. He was told he did not have the support.
Maheswaran turned his attention to local government but before being elected to council in December 2021, the 36-year-old lawyer was an executive at Toplace, Nassif’s development company.
Nassif boarded a flight to Dubai on December 9, 2022 and has never returned. The week before his departure, Nassif and his company were stripped of their building licence. Within months, Nassif’s empire had collapsed with debts of more than $1.6 billion.
There is a warrant out for his arrest.
In February 2023, search warrants were executed at Nassif’s home and office. Two days later Maheswaran’s mobile phone and laptop were seized as the councillor arrived on a flight from Singapore.
At the time, Maheswaran confirmed that Nassif had been a client “over the years” and that he had provided legal advice on a variety of matters. He also said Toplace never had any projects in Strathfield.
Two years earlier, in April 2021, Maheswaran and another Toplace executive had arranged a meeting with David Chandler and his staff. Toplace had been slapped with a prohibition order preventing it from selling apartments until it fixed serious defects at its Skyview development at Castle Hill.
Chandler later told parliament that during the meeting, Maheswaran and his colleague tried to suggest Chandler had been trying to bribe the development company. They claimed Toplace had received a “shakedown” email suggesting that if the company paid $5 million into a trust account, “they could make the building commissioner go away on Skyview”.
Chandler suggested they all go straight to the police, but the Toplace executives declined. Later that day, Maheswaran offered a journalist the story about Chandler’s $5 million alleged attempted bribe. Chandler said the journalist was told by Toplace, “Don’t you know the building commissioner is corrupt? What are you doing about it?”
Chandler told parliament he “took offence” that someone was backgrounding both media and politicians with the outrageous claim that he was on the take.
The Herald has confirmed that Maheswaran was also backgrounding journalists about the building commissioner, including sharing a recording of Chandler making critical comments while at a building site. Chandler had no idea he was being filmed.
In April 2021, when Maheswaran was alleged to have been involved in the attempt to get rid of the building commissioner, his boss Nassif, was in a desperate financial situation.
Two weeks before the alleged “shakedown” meeting, two couriers had been arrested in Perth with a sports bag containing methamphetamine with a street value of $10 million.
West Australian court documents obtained by the Herald state that before dawn on April 4, 2021, Nassif met two couriers who’d driven through the night from Melbourne to collect a sports bag from him. He handed the pair encrypted cipher phones with their instructions as to where the handover would occur.
The pair were arrested in a sting in Perth a few days later. Although Nassif was mentioned as the mastermind during the various trials in WA, he was never arrested.
Back in NSW, the Organised Crime Squads established Strike Force Calool which was investigating serious fraud allegations against Nassif including that he had fabricated pre-sales contracts to get a $150 million loan from Westpac.
As well as examining the attempts to remove Chandler, the ICAC will also investigate the “damage to the political career of the Hon David Elliott MP”.
“This is the plot for Godfather IV,” the former police minister told the Herald about his dealings with Nassif.
Elliott had opposed the Toplace development in Castle Hill because his constituents had been complaining to him about defective units that Nassif had built.
Nassif had obtained his private mobile phone number and left Elliott a threatening message saying, “You f---er, I’m gonna f---ing get you.”
Later, Nassif pursued Elliott around a shopping centre. “I don’t know how he knew I was there, or if it was just a coincidence, but he chased me around Castle Towers wanting to talk about his development, Skyview,” Elliott said.
A couple of months later, Elliott was having drinks with some Liberal councillors at the Park Royal in Parramatta, when Nassif again materialised, demanding to speak to him about his development.
Maxwell Smart of private eyes
Elliott later discovered a private investigator was following him. Police told him he was being “monitored” physically and on social media. Supposedly compromising photos were produced, but Elliott said they didn’t even get the right house – it was his neighbour’s.
“This guy is the Maxwell Smart of the Australian private investigators. He was hopeless, absolutely hopeless,” he said.
In October 2022, Elliott announced he would leave politics after the March 2023 state elections. His electorate of Baulkham Hills was abolished and the branch stacking by the hard right of his party meant he would not be pre-selected for the seat of Castle Hill.
The forthcoming ICAC inquiry will also look at Nassif’s alleged collusion with hard-right Liberal powerbrokers Christian Ellis and Charles and Jean-Claude Perrottet, brothers of then-premier Dominic Perrottet.
Nassif is alleged to have funded the branch stacking with political powerbrokers to install local councillors who allegedly favoured the developer’s interests in Sydney.
At the same time Maheswaran was elected to Strathfield, new Liberal councillors, supposedly more supportive of Nassif’s plans, were parachuted into the Hills Shire Council.
Maheswaran is an associate of two of those listed by the ICAC over their alleged branch stacking: Robert Assaf and Jeremy Greenwood.
One of the central allegations to be explored by the corruption watchdog is the involvement of one of the most powerful figures in the Liberal Party, Dallas McInerney, who last week stood aside from his position as CEO of Catholic Schools NSW. McInerney, 53, is alleged to have “arranged and approved” political donations from Catholic Schools NSW to recruit members to the party.
The ICAC will investigate whether the amounts “were not declared and exceeded applicable donation caps”.
A number of people named in the ICAC inquiry had links to McInerney and Catholic Schools NSW. Jeremy Greenwood’s clients have included Toplace, Catholic Schools NSW and Ultra Business Solutions, which Pensabene co-owns with her husband Tony.
Robert Assaf, the former communications manager for Catholic Schools NSW, is also facing allegations he solicited political donations, including from prohibited donors. He later became the head of corporate affairs at Greyhound Racing NSW, which employs Greenwood’s firm as its lobbyist.
Assaf’s relative Monica Assaf is a co-director of Catholic Education alongside McInerney.
Before he left the council in 2024, Maheswaran declared he had a conflict of interest over a matter in which his friend Rob Assaf was involved.
On July 1, the day the ICAC inquiry was announced, ASIC registered a new advisory company which Assaf, 30, had established with Liberal Strathfield councillor and former mayor John-Paul Baladi, 27.
According to corporate documents, Assaf is holding his half-share in the company on behalf of another unnamed person.
In September 2021, Charles Perrottet, in his capacity as deputy chair of the Liberal’s Local Government Oversight Committee, which has been accused of using its power to preselect the candidates preferred by the hard right, put forward Baladi’s name to run for an unwinnable seat on Burwood Council.
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