A fugitive developer who gained notoriety for gifting his former spouse a yellow Lamborghini says he’ll return to Australia to repair his faulty residences if police promise to not arrest him.
Jean Nassif made a sequence of untamed claims and vows about his enterprise affairs in his first main interview since fleeing Australia in December 2022 leaving hundreds of thousands owed and 1000’s of consumers caught with uninhabitable items.
Mr Nassif, who’s of Lebanese descent, was tracked right down to nation’s capital Beirut by ABC reporters and agreed to satisfy with them at a restaurant.
Fugitive property developer Jean Nassif (pictured left with former spouse Nisserine ‘Nissy’ Nassif) fled Australia in December 2020
He’s wished by NSW police on fees of huge scale fraud however Mr Nasif, 55, mentioned if these are forgiven he’ll return to Australia and make proper 1000’s of sub-standard residences bought by his firm Toplace.
‘I’ll repair it,’ Mr Nassif, who throughout the interview referred to as himself the ‘primary developer on Earth’, instructed the ABC.
‘In the event that they transfer this bulls*** of an arrest and permit me to return and take my enterprise with out fabricating one thing and put me in jail.
‘I already requested the police to mediate and to permit me to barter bail, put the arrest on the aspect as a result of I am not a legal.’
After saying he was prepared to return to Australia by the tip of the yr, he later contacted the ABC reporters to say he was critically in poor health with a mind an infection and was in hospital.
Labelling himself ‘the son of God’ who will ‘not let evil prevail on this Earth’, Mr Nassif claimed all allegations towards him have been manufactured by high-profile Sydney identities, who resented his meteoric rise, or Lebanese gangs attempting to extort him.
Mr Nassif former spouse Nissy poses in entrance of the notorious yellow Lamborghini given to her by the developer in a TikTok that spawned a thousand imitations and parodies
Institution figures focused him as a result of he was an upstart outsider, he claimed, saying he had been blocked all over the place by authorities and the media was deployed to destroy his title and character.
‘What did I do mistaken? Who did I steal? The place is the sufferer?’ Mr Nassif requested as he protested his innocence.
In 2022, constructing licences for Mr Nassif and Toplace have been revoked after a sequence of great points have been discovered on the developer’s Environment and Skyview residences in Fort Hill and the Neighborhood residences in Canterbury, each in western Sydney.
Neighborhood’s 400 residents have been saddled with a restore invoice of as much as $100million whereas 900 residences within the 5 towers of Toplace’s Skyview improvement have been deemed unsafe to even occupy due to cracks discovered by constructing inspectors in 2021.
After Mr Nassif fled Australia, leaving his household behind, Toplace was positioned in administration having racked up money owed of greater than $600million.
Auditors discovered Toplace was probably bancrupt from as early as 2020 and the corporate had didn’t preserve correct information to trace an enormous array of intercompany loans and transactions, a few of which went offshore.
In addition they claimed Mr Nassif misappropriated firm funds for private use.
Mr Nassif denied all these allegations labelling them ‘false’ and ‘lies’.
He mentioned cash he took out of the corporate was from his personal wages and that the corporate remained ‘very sturdy’.
The Nassifs turned meme-worthy as examples of decadent opulence after Mr Nassif posted an notorious Valentine’s Day TikTok, the place he gave his then spouse a yellow Lamborghini.
As he filmed the automobile being delivered to the couple, his former spouse posed in entrance of it blowing kisses whereas carrying designer ripped denims, a Gucci belt and matching yellow basque with rose-pink sun shades.
Mr Nassif mentioned from behind the digicam: ‘And the beast arrive. Congratulations to my new spouse – lastly it’s in our storage. Congratulations Mrs Nassif? You want?…You want?’
The footage sparked a string of parody movies mocking the couple, with clips of bananas, yellow rubber gloves and yellow-lid garbage bins voiced over with a creepily drawled: ‘You want?…You want?’
After her husband fled, Ms Nassif suffered the indignity of getting the $480,000 Lamborghini seized from a carpark on the Rhodes purchasing centre in Sydney’s west by directors recouping property to pay again Toplace collectors.
‘I used to be in Coles at Rhodes purchasing centre…we return to the place I parked it, and it is gone,’ she instructed the Each day Telegraph.
‘The children have been crying and attempting to assist me discover it. I referred to as safety and so they checked the cameras (within the carpark) and will see a man taking it.’
Different automobiles belonging to Mr Nassif’s members of the family have additionally been taken by directors.
Mr Nasif instructed the ABC such information brings him psychological misery.
‘They’re stealing my empire in entrance of my eyes. Destroying my household,’ he mentioned.
‘They took the vehicles from my youngsters. Disgrace on them. And now they need to take the home that my little three youngsters reside in.’
Throughout his reign as considered one of Sydney’s highest profile builders, Mr Nassif was caught with cocaine at Sydney’s Star On line casino however escaped conviction on account of his good character.
5 towers of Toplace’s Skyview improvement (pictured) have been deemed unsafe to even occupy due to cracks discovered by constructing inspectors in 2021.
He instructed the ABC he didn’t have a drug drawback as a result of when working his empire he had ‘no time for that s**t’.
In 2022, a Liberal MP used parliamentary privilege to accuse Mr Nassif of paying ‘important funds’ to a Liberal social gathering lobbyist to get a council to approve developments.
He denied the allegation.
Mr Nassif claimed Lebanese gang members demanded a $6 million bribe from him to raise a cease work order on a Toplace mission and make all his issues with a council ‘go away’.
Such extortion was rampant in Sydney, he claimed.
‘There are heaps of them, [doing] drug dealings, stealing, forcing individuals to pay cash for ransoms or for cover. You pay in any other case somebody will come and steal you or break your home windows,’ he instructed the ABC.
He additionally denied accusations he fabricated proof to get a $150million mortgage from Westpac financial institution, which led to the warrant for Mr Nassif’s arrest.
His daughter Ashlyn has been arrested and faces fees of serving to faux contracts for the mortgage.
In his case Mr Nassif claims he was by no means issued with a warrant and solely knew of it from the media.
NSW Police instructed the ABC that they’ve contacted Nassif’s authorized group with the allegations and are making use of for an Interpol Pink Discover, which is a worldwide arrest warrant.
Through the interview Nassif additionally denied claims made throughout a West Australian court docket case that he had equipped 10 kilograms of ice.
He mentioned such allegations have been simply additional makes an attempt to ‘muddy his title’.
