Daniel Ibrahim tells of the day he and dad John got into a punch up

The turbulent relationship between John Ibrahim and his son Daniel was laid bare in a series of explosive phone calls tendered to a court detailing physical altercations between the pair. LISTEN TO THE CALLS

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For three decades, Sydney has regarded the House of Ibrahim with fear and fascination.

Now, for the first time, we take you inside the private world of this complicated family thanks to an enormous cache of surveillance material tendered to a NSW court.

There are more than 880 phone calls and texts that were covertly recorded by police over more than a year, revealing the truth about feuds, grudges and family lore, including the secret tunnel under patriarch John Ibrahim’s Eastern Suburbs mansion.

There are hundreds of police photos taken inside Ibrahim homes during police raids, and an even larger collection of surveillance photos taken by police tailing family members and associates through the city’s streets.

The material sheds new light on the family’s networks, reaching beyond brothers John, Fadi, Michael and Sam to the far reaches of entertainment, night-life, property and crime.

On their private calls, the brothers and their associates detail their rivalries and power struggles, as well as moments of “us against the world” camaraderie and black humour.

Daniel Ibrahim was burning. The target of his anger was his father, John.

It was August 11, 2017, and the 28-year-old had just been released from Surry Hills Police Centre on bail where he spent nights in a cell after being arrested for holding a suitcase containing more than $2 million in cash.

He has since been cleared of any involvement in the tobacco importation ring that snared his uncle Michael.

Back in 2017, he was relieved to be out, but still furious. His stint behind bars was extended because of the time it took his mother, Melissa Taylor, to raise more than $600,000 in bail money to secure his release.

For this, Daniel blamed John.

HEAR DANIEL TALK ABOUT THE PUNCH UP

READ THE TRANSCRIPT: WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

In telephone conversations tapped by police and tendered to court, Daniel was recorded telling friends that his father “left me in there” after refusing to help raise the bail money.

“Mum …(went) … to John (for help with the bail money) and John’s told her to get f**ked because ‘he’s not my problem’,” Daniel was recorded telling an “unknown male” on August 24, 2017.

Daniel had been arrested on August 8, 2017. It was the same day Michael was arrested in drug importation case and Fadi was nabbed for his alleged role in illegal tobacco smuggling,

charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Daniel was recorded on a phone call tendered to court detailing his heated relationship with his father John.

Privately, John was enraged that his family members had cast yet another legal shadow over the family name.

His son had a different interpretation, which he relayed in the August 24 call: “It ruined his bullshit image that he’s been trying to f**king make.”

Daniel told his friend he confronted his father and the pair had a punch-up.

“So I had it out with him when I got back, f***ing (he) slapped me across the face, called me an embarrassment, that me and his brothers have ruined everything that he’s tried to achieve,” Daniel said.

In an earlier call with then prison inmate, Nabih Hadid, Daniel gave a more detailed account of his version of the fight with John.

“He swung twice,” Daniel said in the call on August 16, 2017. “So I grabbed his face and slammed him up against the wall. Cracked his head against the wall (and) he fell on the floor.

“He slapped me once … I called him a dog and he went to slap me again and I dodged it,” Daniel said.

“(I) grabbed him by the face, pushed him, and slammed him up against the wall … fell over, cracked his head on the wall and fell over. Big one. Big one, bro. Big one.

“Then he jumped back up and we headbutted each other,” Daniel continued. “(We) went head to head and I go ‘Go on, c**t, swing again, I’ll f**king throw punches at you’.”

The fight appeared to end in a stalemate, according to Daniel’s version.

Enthralled by what he was hearing, Hadid wanted more: “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Daniel said. “He told me to get out of the house, get out of the street; how I’m an embarrassment to him, everything that he’s tried to do, a disrespectful c**t, my life is over, blah blah blah.”

The calls provide a rare insight into the family’s politics.

While he may be the ‘King of the Cross’, John still has to deal with real life issues, like managing a tempestuous relationship with his son.

At the heart of their issues is the bitterness Daniel harbours towards John over the role his father played in his upbringing.

Daniel Ibrahim and his father John clashed over everything from unpaid rent to jealousy over women. Picture: Toby Zerna

Beyond that, the pair clash over unpaid rent, jealousy over women, and other issues that are often spurred on by Daniel’s sense of entitlement and youthful petulance in trying to challenge his father’s alpha dog status.

The fight over the bail appeared to put their relationship under extreme strain, with Daniel still simmering over the confrontation more than a week after being released.

“John’s not my dad from now on for all intents and purposes,” he said in a call to Nabih Hadid on August 18, 2017.

“If he says anything about me, don’t listen to it.”

Earlier, Daniel told Hadid: “Mum did everything, he’s a f**king dog, bro.”

In another call, Daniel told a family insider he sees John’s younger brother Michael as a father figure after the pair went into the construction business together.

“I’ve got Mick and my mum, they’re the only people I can count on,” he said in the call on August 3, 2017.

Daniel was born in October 1990 and was raised mostly on the Gold Coast before he moved to Sydney in about 2010 where he linked up with his nightclub owning father.

John, who has portraits of himself and Daniel on the walls of his home, has publicly revealed a different picture of their relationship.

In his autobiography, Last King of the Cross, John wrote proudly about giving his son a start in the hospitality industry and hoped he was responsible for inspiring Daniel to join the army.

Daniel is not as complimentary in his discussions about John.

John Ibrahim’s girlfriend Sarah Budge with Daniel Ibrahim. Picture: Instagram

Daniel Ibrahim’s mother Melissa Taylor.

In an August 3, 2017 phone call, Ibrahim family confidant Ryan Watsford chastised Daniel after he broke up with girlfriend Bridgette Lee: “She’s the nicest person and the sweetest natured person … you’re mad if you don’t knock her up mate.”

Daniel replied: “What happens if I meet someone else and I want to have a kid with them. I’m not going to do what John’s done to me and have f**king 10 kids to a bunch of different (women).”

Watsford responded: “I’m telling you, you’re not going to be like your dad and have kids all over Sydney. I know you’re not like that and I know you get the shits, right.”

Later that day, Daniel referenced the conversation with Watsford in a call with Ms Lee.

“He’d (Watsford) just be fishing for information so he could tell John, so then John can talk about me like he knows me,” Daniel said in the call.

There appears to be ill feeling from Daniel’s mother towards John.

“(Mum) gets pretty heated when she’s drunk and brings up John,” Daniel said. “She’ll end up killing him one day, I swear to god … Hopefully someone else does it. He’s a f**king piece of shit.”

Despite their differences, John had been letting his son live in the apartment block he owns a few doors down from his cliffside home.

John chased his son for rent money, but Daniel refused to pay. Daniel complained that John’s girlfriend, Sarah Budge, had not paid rent to his father for the Kings Cross property where she runs Crane Bar.

“He’d been chasing me for a year and I said ‘(The) cheque’s in the mail’,” Daniel said in his call to the unknown male.

John Ibrahim, Margaret Staltaro, Michael Ibrahim and Daniel Ibrahim. Picture: Instagram

By August 8, 2017, John was turning up the pressure on Daniel by saying he had to leave the apartment to make way for Michael Ibrahim’s wife Caitlyn Hall. Ms Hall was soon to be kicked out of their Vaucluse home after a missed rent payment and Michael’s arrest in Dubai.

“I’m going to war with John,” Daniel told Ms Hall in an August 14, 2017, call.

“He’s saying he’s throwing my shit in the street and all this sort of stuff. I told him to go f**k himself … He’s just being a c**t.”

Daniel moved out of the apartment and into his mother’s Bondi home on August 17, remarking on a call that it was a “bit of a downsize, but that’s all right”.

“I’m sick of living in that street … I moved around heaps as a kid,” he told his ex girlfriend on August 15, 2017. “I’m happy to get out of that street. I f.**king hate living near the c**t. The guy’s a f**king piece of shit.”

Daniel appeared to feel threatened by his father when it came to women.

In a conversation on August 15, Ms Lee related to Daniel how John had come into her Kings Cross beauty salon, gave her a kiss hello and made a joke about the arrests of Michael, Fadi, Daniel and Ms Budge in police raids a week earlier.

“(He was) probably in there trying to pick you up,” Daniel told Ms Lee.

“That’s what he’s like. Probably in there trying to pick you up. So I’m fighting with him at the moment. I’m always fighting with him … l ike, an actual fight.”

Ms Lee said: “I just found it so heartless that he could be coming in and laughing about it, when like his son gets arrested, his f**king girlfriend gets arrested, all of his closest friends do and he just comes in and laughs. I was like ‘You f**king heartless human. Like, who are you?”

In one of the phone calls tendered to court Daniel Ibrahim and his former girlfriend Bridgette Lee are heard talking about John Ibrahim.

Daniel went one step further.

“He doesn’t give a f**k,” he said. “He was coming in trying to flirt with you. I guarantee you. If you gave him that vibe, he would try and bang ya.”

Ms Lee replied: “Eww.”

But Daniel was guilty of making even worse jokes about the arrests.

Speaking to Ms Hall about his family members sitting in a Dubai jail following their arrests on August 14, 2017, Daniel joked: “At least Mick will lose some weight.”

“I wish I could see what (Fadi’s) hair looks like,” Daniel said. “He’s probably trying to iron his hair out with two hot rocks.”

On August 16, 2017, Daniel told Hadid on a jail call that he thought “John went to go try to pick up Bridgette yesterday”.

“The next time I see him, I’m going to whisper to him, ‘You know I f**ked Sarah’,” Daniel said.

By August 24, 2017, Daniel told the unknown male he hadn’t heard from his father “in weeks” but received a text message that day “out of the blue”.

“He said you’re a disrespectful little maggot, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Daniel said John wrote in the text message.

Daniel said he later sent John a picture of a newspaper article where his father was photographed wearing a cardigan and joked that he “looked old”.

“Then there’s another pic of him a few days later and he’s in a leather jacket with styled hair,” Daniel told the unknown male.

The call then descended into a bitching session with Daniel moving on to another news item where John was photographed on the balcony of his home reading his autobiography.

“That’s like getting caught having a wank to your own photo,” Daniel said.

Later in the call, Daniel relayed that he was also brutal with John about the book, telling his father it was only a top seller in “Caltex”.

John texted back: “All you’re good for is a smart-arse comment”, Daniel told his friend.