A Top Official Says a Developer Threatened Him. Now a Corruption Watchdog Is Investigating.
A former top building official in New South Wales told a corruption inquiry that a developer threatened him over the phone in 2021. David Chandler, who was the state's building commissioner, said developer Jean Nassif told him: "Don't you harm my project, and if you harm my project, I'll harm you" (The Guardian, 27 August 2026).
The corruption inquiry is called ICAC, which stands for the Independent Commission Against Corruption. It investigates whether public officials have been improperly influenced. This particular investigation is called Operation Rosny, and it is looking into whether roughly $2 million paid by Nassif and his company, Toplace, to three young conservative political operatives was actually a secret political donation. In New South Wales, property developers are banned from making political donations, so if this money was a donation, it would be illegal.
The three people who received the money were Jeremy Greenwood, Christian Ellis, and Charles Perrottet. Charles Perrottet is the brother of Dominic Perrottet, who was the premier of New South Wales, the state's top political leader. ICAC wants to find out whether the money was meant to get David Chandler removed from his job as building commissioner. ICAC's public notice, dated 1 July 2026, says the investigation is about "the removal of the Building Commissioner, David Chandler OAM, from public office in respect of Mr Nassif's developments" (ICAC, 1 July 2026).
To understand why a developer might want the building commissioner gone, it helps to know what a building commissioner does. Think of the building commissioner as a safety inspector with real power. If a building has been poorly constructed, the commissioner can stop people from moving in until it is fixed.
That is exactly what Chandler did to Nassif's company. He ordered an inspection of a Toplace building in Botany where workers had to rip up bathroom floors to check whether the waterproofing was done right. In April 2021, he blocked people from moving into a Toplace apartment complex called Skyview in Castle Hill, after a Greens senator named David Shoebridge and others sent him photos showing serious cracks in the building's basement. At the inquiry's opening hearing on 27 July 2026, it was noted that Nassif faced this kind of scrutiny across about 40 of his building sites.
The bad blood between the two men started before the phone call. Chandler said they had clashed in person in 2020, when Nassif became "loud and overbearing" at a meeting. After the 2021 phone call, Chandler banned Nassif from being present during site inspections and decided he would not deal with him directly. Chandler said he had done hundreds of inspections over five years, but he knew Nassif felt he was being singled out.
After the phone call, Chandler told the inquiry, there was what he called "an accumulation of pressure." First, an anonymous email was sent to Toplace suggesting that a $5 million payment to a lawyer named William Roberts would get the building commissioner to lift his orders. Those orders were blocking occupancy certificates, which are official documents saying a building is safe to live in. Without one, a developer cannot sell or rent out apartments.
Toplace executives, including Sharangan Maheswaran, who is a person of interest in the inquiry, showed the email to Chandler. He told them to go to the police right away. Maheswaran said they were still trying to figure out where the email came from. Chandler wrote notes about the conversation, told his boss Emma Hogan, and an internal investigation was ordered. Toplace executives did not take part in that investigation. Chandler was cleared of any wrongdoing, and he is not under investigation by ICAC.
ABC News, reporting on 27 August 2026, described Chandler's evidence as detailing an alleged "shakedown" involving Nassif, Liberal Party operatives, and possible breaches of NSW electoral laws (ABC News, 27 August 2026). The Age's live coverage focused on Nassif's alleged threat to hurt Chandler while the building commissioner was investigating Toplace developments.
The pressure did not stop with the email. Chandler found out that people were telling politicians he was "on the take," meaning they were claiming he was corrupt. Journalists were also given information designed to damage his reputation. At the inquiry's opening on 28 July 2026, ICAC noted that a man named Mr Williams had raised allegations of corruption involving Nassif and senior figures in the NSW Liberal Party (ICAC opening address, 28 July 2026).
Nassif left Australia for rural Lebanon in 2022 and is expected to speak to the inquiry by video link next week. Because he is outside Australia, the commission has had to adjust how it handles his evidence.
The bigger picture here matters. This inquiry brings together three things: how buildings are regulated, how political parties are funded, and the internal politics of the Liberal Party. The fact that Charles Perrottet, the brother of a former premier, is involved gives the investigation a political dimension that opposition parties and groups pushing for transparency will watch very closely.
If ICAC can prove that the $2 million was specifically meant to remove a regulator who was standing in the way of a developer's projects, it would mean someone tried to pay to get a public official removed. That is a serious form of corruption. But the commission still has to prove several things: that the payments were intended for that purpose, that they actually led to action against Chandler, and that the people who received the money knew what it was for. Those answers will shape the inquiry's findings.
For now, Chandler's testimony has put on the public record exactly how the pressure worked: a direct threat from a developer whose buildings were under inspection, an anonymous offer to pay money to make the problem go away, attempts to damage the commissioner's reputation through politicians and journalists, and a regulator who wrote everything down. The commission's job now is to figure out whether Nassif was acting alone, or whether this was a coordinated effort carried out through political channels.
