Inside Operation Rosny: A Building Commissioner, a Fugitive Developer, and $2 Million in Questioned Payments

Former NSW building commissioner David Chandler told ICAC on 27 August 2026 that fugitive developer Jean Nassif threatened him during a 2021 phone call, saying: "Don't you harm my project, and if you harm my project, I'll harm you" (The Guardian, 27 August 2026).

ICAC — New South Wales's anti-corruption watchdog — is running this investigation under the name Operation Rosny. The inquiry is examining whether roughly $2 million allegedly paid by Nassif and his company, Toplace Pty Ltd, to three young conservative political operatives constituted illegal political donations to the NSW Liberal Party. Those operatives are Jeremy Greenwood, Christian Ellis, and Charles Perrottet, the brother of former premier Dominic Perrottet. The commission wants to know whether the money was meant to secure Chandler's removal as building commissioner. ICAC's public notice, dated 1 July 2026, frames the investigation around "the removal of the Building Commissioner, David Chandler OAM, from public office in respect of Mr Nassif's developments" (ICAC, 1 July 2026).

To grasp why a developer might want a building commissioner gone, it helps to understand what Chandler was doing to Toplace. A building commissioner has the power to order inspections, halt occupancy, and demand repairs when construction quality falls short. Chandler ordered a destructive inspection of a Toplace building in Botany, which meant ripping up bathroom floors to check whether waterproofing had been done properly. In April 2021, he placed a prohibition order on Skyview, a Toplace apartment complex in Castle Hill, preventing anyone from moving in. That order came after Greens senator David Shoebridge and others sent Chandler photographs of significant basement cracking. At ICAC's opening hearing on 27 July 2026, it was noted that Nassif faced regulatory scrutiny across roughly 40 development sites.

The tension between the two men started before the phone call. Chandler testified that he and Nassif had clashed in person in 2020, at a meeting where Nassif became "loud and overbearing." After the 2021 call, Chandler banned Nassif from being present during site inspections and decided not to deal with him directly. Chandler said he had conducted hundreds of inspections over his five years in the role, but was aware Nassif believed he was being singled out.

What followed the phone call, Chandler told the commission, was what he described as "an accumulation of pressure." The first concrete sign was an anonymous email sent to Toplace suggesting that a $5 million payment to lawyer William Roberts would cause the building commissioner to lift orders that were holding up occupancy certificates for Toplace developments. Occupancy certificates are official documents certifying that a building is safe to live in — without one, a developer cannot sell or lease apartments. Toplace executives, including Sharangan Maheswaran, identified as a person of interest in the inquiry, raised the email with Chandler. He suggested they go to police immediately. Maheswaran told him they were still looking into where the email came from. Chandler took contemporaneous notes, reported the matter to his departmental head Emma Hogan, and an internal audit was ordered. Toplace executives did not engage with that departmental inquiry. Chandler was cleared, 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 potential breaches of NSW electoral laws (ABC News, 27 August 2026). The Age's live coverage framed the testimony around Nassif's alleged threat to hurt Chandler during the building commissioner's investigation of Toplace developments.

The pressure extended beyond the anonymous email. Chandler became aware of claims made to politicians that he was "on the take," and journalists were offered material intended to damage his reputation. The ICAC opening address on 28 July 2026 noted that a Mr Williams raised allegations of corruption concerning Nassif and senior figures in the NSW Liberal Party (ICAC opening address, 28 July 2026). ICAC is investigating whether the payments to the Reformers, a group of young conservatives, amounted to illegal donations under the Electoral Funding Act, which prohibits property developers from making political donations in New South Wales.

Nassif left Australia for rural Lebanon in 2022 and is expected to appear before the inquiry by video link next week. His absence from the jurisdiction has shaped the commission's approach to his evidence.

The broader stakes of Operation Rosny go beyond a single regulator's ordeal. The inquiry sits at the intersection of NSW building regulation, electoral funding law, and factional Liberal Party politics. The involvement of Charles Perrottet, brother of a former premier, gives the investigation a political dimension that opposition parties and transparency advocates will scrutinise closely. If the $2 million at the centre of the investigation is proven to have been directed at removing a regulator who was actively blocking a developer's projects, it would amount to an attempt to buy control of a regulatory function — to pay for the removal of the person standing between a developer and approval to sell apartments.

ICAC's findings will hinge on several questions of evidence. Can the commission establish the intent behind the payments — that they were specifically meant to get Chandler removed? Can it draw a clear causal line between the payments and any political action taken against him? And what did the people who received the funds actually know? Those answers will shape the inquiry's conclusions.

For now, Chandler's testimony has placed on the public record the mechanics of the alleged pressure: a direct threat from a developer under active regulatory scrutiny, an anonymous attempt at a financial workaround, reputational attacks channelled through politicians and journalists, and a regulator who documented each step. The commission's task is to determine whether that pressure was Nassif acting alone or part of a coordinated effort facilitated through political channels.