‘A dangerous person’: Contractor felt threatened after fiery meeting with Nassif

A contractor who disgraced developer Jean Nassif had accused of leaking information to the building commissioner described him as a “dangerous person” after a heated confrontation in an inner west cafe, a corruption inquiry has heard.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption had previously heard Nassif alleged two contractors, Adrian Healey and Navid Ardestani, had attempted to extort him for $5 million in exchange for favourable outcomes with building commissioner David Chandler.

On Thursday, counsel assisting Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC, read from a transcript of evidence given by Healey during an earlier private hearing. Healey said he agreed to meet Nassif at a cafe, where the developer immediately accused him of leaking information about defects in his buildings.

“He was extremely hostile and had then said what he said about someone reporting him to the building commissioner, and then he said he thinks it was me and pointed at me,” Healey said.

“I sort of stood up and I said, ‘Well, I want you to take that back’, I’m sure I would have used some expletives probably, but I felt myself wanting to de-escalate it because he seemed more of a dangerous person than probably when I’d met him at the beginning.”

Healey had said in private evidence that neither he nor Ardestani ever claimed to have a friend who could fix Nassif’s problems with Chandler. Rather, Ardestani knew a builder who could help rectify defects to comply with any orders from Chandler.

Toplace lawyer and former Labor Strathfield councillor Sharangan Maheswaran continued his fourth day of evidence before the commission on Thursday, where he was pressed on what he knew about the extortion claims.

Dwyer suggested to Maheswaran he had made selective notes about a recording between Nassif and Ardestani to deliberately omit a denial of any shakedown.

She read out a transcript of a call between Nassif and Ardestani.

Nassif asked: “Where did you get your power, that power from? You can control the government.”

Ardestani responded: “Which power are you talking about?” to which Nassif said: “I’ve been told you can control the government, the commissioner.”

“The government?” a confused Ardestani asked. “The commissioner,” Nassif responded.

Ardestani then requested to see Nassif in person.

Nassif sent a recording of the conversation to Maheswaran, who created his own notes about the recording.

In his notes, Maheswaran did not include Ardestani’s confusion about Nassif’s claims, and only recorded his boss’s accusation about Ardestani controlling the government and “Navid asked for a meeting in person as he did not want to discuss it on the phone”.

“You deliberately make that sound sinister, in circumstances where Navid has denied that he can control the government and denied that he can control the commissioner,” Dwyer said.

“I don’t agree. This is me extracting the relevant parts for what I’m looking at, and I think this was typed in a very short period of time, like a very, very short period of time,” Maheswaran said.