Ray Hadley has major win in fugitive Jean Nassif’s defamation case

International fugitive Jean Nassif has lost a bid to keep his multimillion-dollar defamation case against broadcaster Ray Hadley alive, after a court rejected his application to revive the case.

A warrant was issued for Nassif’s arrest in June last year over an alleged bank fraud. Separately, Nassif’s construction empire, including Toplace Pty Ltd and dozens of related entities, was placed into administration in July.

Ray Hadley and Jean Nassif.

While Nassif left Australia for Lebanon in late 2022 and has not returned, he had persevered in his defamation case against the Sydney broadcaster and radio station 2GB.

The case was filed in the Federal Court in July 2020 over broadcasts about Nassif’s residential projects. It was automatically axed in March after he breached court orders.

Nassif told the ABC last month in Beirut that he was prepared to return to Australia to “fix” his development empire if police dropped their “bullshit of an arrest”.

Justice Wendy Abraham quoted from that interview and said in a judgment on Tuesday that she was “not satisfied that Mr Nassif will likely return to Australia for the foreseeable future”. She rejected Nassif’s application to reinstate the defamation case and ordered him to pay the media parties’ costs.

‘Hiding in Lebanon’

“I’ve been waiting a long, long time to say what I can say now about Toplace and Jean Nassif,” Hadley said after Tuesday’s decision, adding that Nassif was “hiding in Lebanon”.

“I’ve been under tremendous pressure because of this bloke,” Hadley said.

Toplace is behind a series of troubled apartment projects in Sydney including in Canterbury and Parramatta. Hadley said hundreds, if not thousands, of people had been “let down financially” after buying apartments from Nassif.

Nine Radio managing director Tom Malone welcomed the decision and said in a statement: “Ray has our continued support as he fiercely advocates for all the victims of Jean Nassif who are still fighting for fair compensation.”

The judge’s decision

The judge said there was “no medical evidence” to support an assertion Nassif had a hernia repaired last June, “with the only purported proof being photographs … [of Nassif] in an apparent hospital setting”.

She said Nassif had also “failed to demonstrate that he ever lacked a capacity to travel”.

“That is, there is no medical reason relied on as to why he could not have returned to Australia; he simply chose not to,” the judge said.

Abraham noted The Daily Telegraph had published a photo of Nassif, “said to be taken in a casino on 8 April 2024, smoking a cigar and surrounded by personal security”.

Jean Nassif has submitted a photograph of himself in a Lebanese hospital as proof of a medical ailment preventing him returning to Australia.

“At face value it reflects that the applicant is living his life in Lebanon, apparently unrestricted by any health issues,” the judge said, adding that it was “not necessary to rely on this photograph to resolve these applications”.

The circumstances suggested Nassif had “little incentive” to return to Australia “for the foreseeable future”, Abraham said, including that there was a warrant out for his arrest, his companies are in administration and his bank accounts are frozen. An administrator’s report has estimated the Toplace group has debts to unsecured creditors totalling $1.6 billion.

Tortured history of litigation

The defamation case had a tortured history.

Nine, the owner of 2GB and this masthead, had a win last year when the court ordered Nassif and two companies to pay $900,000 in security into court to cover the media parties’ legal costs in the event he lost the lawsuit.

Nassif paid the first tranche of $300,000 on October 9, two weeks after a 28-day deadline and one day before the case would have been dismissed automatically. There was “no evidence” about the source of the funds, the judge said, and his bank accounts were frozen.

The second and third tranches of $300,000 were not yet due. The proceedings were stayed – effectively paused – in September because he failed to meet the deadline for the first payment.

Nassif’s lawyers foreshadowed in February that he would seek another stay of the case pending the determination of any criminal proceedings. However, the case was automatically axed when Nassif missed a deadline of March 11 to file that stay application.

Having missed that deadline, Nassif was ordered to pay an additional $50,000 in security to apply to revive the proceedings. The court rejected his applications to reinstate the case and for a six-month stay.

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