Last King of the Cross John Ibrahim’s squeaky clean Sydney underbelly image

ALL black hair, tan and flashing white teeth, King of the Cross John Ibrahim has become the pet underworld figure of Sydney’s eastern suburbs set.

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All black hair, tan and flashing white teeth, John Ibrahim has become the pet underworld figure of the eastern suburbs set.

He is a celebrity crim with no criminal convictions apart from one for assault as a teenager. In other words, a safe bad boy who adds a frisson of danger to the parties, the openings and the fashion shows.

He has just released his autobiography, the Last King of the Cross, glamorising his years as one of the biggest nightclub operators along the city’s glitter strip.

The boys: Nightclub owner John Ibrahim at the launch of his book. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Ibrahim front row at the Ksubi collection show. Picture: Getty Images

Nightclub owner John Ibrahim has become a must have at parties and events. Picture: Getty

John, 46, and his band of brothers — Michael, 39, Fadi, 43, and Sam, 50 — have become the city’s most infamous underworld family, thrust into the limelight through their wealth, shootings, contacts and, in the case of Michael and Sam, their crimes.

READ MORE: John Ibrahim’s home raided, Michael and Fadi arrested

Police take items from the nightclub tsar’s home during the recent raids. Picture: Richard Dobson

Promoting his book last week, John spoke proudly of how his son Daniel Ibrahim, 26, had served his country in the army.

It was drug dealer Bill Bayeh who thrust John Ibrahim into the limelight when tapes of him were played at the 1995 Police Royal Commission. Bayeh was taped saying he wanted Ibrahim, his brother Sam and a mate out of the Cross because they were threatening his drugs empire.

John Ibrahim’s rumoured love interest model Sarah Budge ‘caught with Glock pistol’

Ibrahim denied allegations he was the new lifeblood of the Cross drug trade, as he has denied countless other allegations since, beating a charge of murder and of threatening a witness.

Close mates radio shockjock Kyle Sandilands, Imogen Anthony and John Ibrahim.

Last King of the X by John Ibrahim has been released by Pan Macmillan Australia and is now on sale.

Perhaps significantly given yesterday’s raids, it was the new police commissioner Mick Fuller who arrested John Ibrahim in September 1997 when his older brother Sam was on remand in Long Bay Jail for drug-dealing, for which he was acquitted.

The key witness against Sam was also in jail. He was in protection, when it was claimed that John threatened his wife that the witness would be killed if he gave evidence.

Police and forensic officers outside John Ibrahim's house in Dover Heights. Picture: Richard Dobson

Fuller charged Ibrahim with threatening a witness and acting with intent to pervert the course of justice and he was committed to stand trial. Ibrahim denied the incident. The wife of the witness left the country and refused to give evidence. The charges were dismissed.

Michael Ibrahim was sentenced in 2008 to a maximum nine years and four months’ jail for his role in the fatal stabbing of Robin Nassour — brother of Fat Pizza comedian George Nassour — in Chiswick in Sydney’s inner west.

John Ibrahim's luxury home was raided by police.

While in jail, he and Fadi together with another man were committed to stand trial for conspiring to murder John Macris three years earlier. Both Ibrahim brothers were acquitted.

After serving more than his 6½-years of his sentence, Michael was granted parole during which in 2015 he was shot in the shoulder while standing on a footpath on Macquarie Street.

Fadi Ibrahim was shot five times after he was ambushed by a gunman as he sat with his now wife Shayda Bastani in his yellow Lamborghini parked outside their lavish Castle Cove home in 2009. The shooting remains unsolved.

Next month Sam Ibrahim, a former president of the Nomads bikie gang, will be sentenced after pleading guilty to conspiring with his sister Jazz Dior to suppling guns to a former rock band drummer.

Dior, 47, who changed her name from Maha Sayour in 2013, was sentenced to an 18-month intensive corrections order which means she avoids jail.