John Ibrahim’s financial controller ‘wife’ listed in search warrants for Operation Veyda
SHE is the businesswoman who John Ibrahim credits with helping build his multimillion-dollar empire after they met when she once made the King of the Cross pay $15 to get into a nightclub.
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SHE is the businesswoman who John Ibrahim credits with helping build his multimillion-dollar empire after they met when she once made the King of the Cross pay $15 to get into a nightclub.
Now Margaret Staltaro, 44, has been dragged into the investigation over an alleged international drug smuggling ring that has engulfed the Ibrahim family.
She is listed among John Ibrahim’s brothers and associates on the search warrants that were executed on Tuesday as part of Operation Veyda, which targeted organised crime and drug smuggling across The Netherlands, Dubai and Sydney.
There is no suggestion that Ms Staltaro is involved in crime and neither she nor John Ibrahim have been charged.
Ms Staltaro was unknown outside Ibrahim’s nightclub realm until he revealed her influence in his recent autobiography where he described her as “like a wife without the sex or the cooking, or cleaning. Just the arguing and nagging”.
Believed to have been overseas when the raids took place, Ms Staltaro lives in one of the properties owned by Ibrahim in exclusive George St, Dover Heights.
She lives in one of a pair of units just two doors away from Ibrahim’s clifftop home.
The other unit is the home of his son Daniel Ibrahim, 26, who was arrested during the raids and was yesterday granted bail charged with intending to use more than $2.25 million to import illegal tobacco.
Described by the elder Ibrahim as his financial controller, Ms Staltaro has spent almost $10 million in the past three years buying three properties in Bayswater Rd, Potts Point, through her private company, Wirlinga No.10 Pty Ltd.
They include the building that once housed the iconic Bayswater Brasserie but is now home to the late-night bar and restaurant Crane Bar, owned by Ibrahim’s girlfriend Sarah Budge, 27.
She was also arrested during the raids and released on bail yesterday charged with possessing a loaded Glock pistol.
Police are carrying out standard DNA and ballistics tests on the gun to determine who has used it and if it is linked to any crimes.
In his book, Ibrahim describes Ms Staltaro as a “female Tongan Sam”, referring to his fearsome bodyguard, Semi “Tongan Sam” Ngata.
He bought the $270,000 block of land on Angophora Drive, Rothbury, seven years ago.
Ibrahim also still owns a house close to the family home in Price St, Merrylands.
While for years he denied his direct involvement in the city’s top nightclubs in the Cross and Oxford St, operating through “frontmen”, Ibrahim opens up in his book about how at one stage he was “making more than twice what I earn from my clubs from the rackets and taxes around the Cross”.
He also boasts about having huge amounts of cash. He talks about buying Darlinghurst nightclub DCM with a “bag of cash” and a $1 million bank cheque.
He states he bought his Dover Heights house after his assistant found it for him to rent at $15,000 a week: “It’s filled with 1970s shag carpet, but I love the view over the Pacific. A year after moving in, I buy the house.”
In 2011, Ibrahim was named in court papers as having made $500,000, which he used to fit out his then-trophy nightclub the Piano Room, after two of his mates were charged with dishonestly obtaining a Commonwealth Bank loan of $7,350,000 based on an inflated valuation for a property in Darlinghurst Rd, opposite the Coca-Cola sign.
The charges against the two men were no-billed and Ibrahim was never charged over the alleged scam.
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