Fugitive builder Jean Nassif - famed for gifting a yellow Lambo to his ex-wife ... trends now
A fugitive developer who gained notoriety for gifting his former wife a yellow Lamborghini says he will return to Australia to fix his defective apartments if police promise not to arrest him.
Jean Nassif made a series of wild claims and vows about his business affairs in his first major interview since fleeing Australia in December 2022 leaving millions owed and thousands of buyers stuck with uninhabitable units.
Mr Nassif, who is of Lebanese descent, was tracked down to country's capital Beirut by ABC reporters and agreed to meet with them at a cafe.
Fugitive property developer Jean Nassif (pictured left with former wife Nisserine 'Nissy' Nassif) fled Australia in December 2020
He is wanted by NSW police on charges of large scale fraud but Mr Nasif, 55, said if those are forgiven he will return to Australia and make right thousands of sub-standard apartments sold by his company Toplace.
'I will fix it,' Mr Nassif, who during the interview called himself the 'number one developer on Earth', told the ABC.
'If they move this bulls*** of an arrest and allow me to go back and take my business without fabricating something and put me in jail.
'I already asked the police to mediate and to allow me to negotiate bail, put the arrest on the side because I'm not a criminal.'
After saying he was ready to go back to Australia by the end of the year, he later contacted the ABC reporters to say he was seriously ill with a brain 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 against him were manufactured by high-profile Sydney identities, who resented his meteoric rise, or Lebanese gangs trying to extort him.
Mr Nassif former wife Nissy poses in front of the infamous yellow Lamborghini given to her by the developer in a TikTok that spawned a thousand imitations and parodies
Establishment figures targeted him because he was an upstart outsider, he claimed, saying he had been blocked everywhere by government and the media was deployed to destroy his name and character.
'What did I do wrong? Who did I steal? Where is the victim?' Mr Nassif asked as he protested his innocence.
In 2022, building licences for Mr Nassif and Toplace were revoked after a series of serious issues were found at the developer's Atmosphere and Skyview apartments in Castle Hill and the Vicinity apartments in Canterbury, both in western Sydney.
Vicinity's 400 residents were saddled with a repair bill of up to $100million while 900 apartments in the five towers of Toplace's Skyview development were deemed unsafe to even occupy because of cracks found by building inspectors in 2021.
After Mr Nassif fled Australia, leaving his family behind, Toplace was placed in administration having racked up debts of more than $600million.
Auditors found Toplace was likely insolvent from as early as 2020 and the company had failed to keep proper records to track a vast array of intercompany loans and transactions, some of which went offshore.
