Strike Force target unmasked following raid on Jandegian’s Bellevue Hill mansion

Marios Alexandridis is scheduled to appear in court next week.

When armed police officers put a battering ram through the door of Garrett and Stephanie Jandegian’s Bellevue Hill mansion this year they were carrying a warrant to seize documents and mobile phones – but they were actually hunting for information on another person entirely.

Their mission was to collect evidence against Marios Alexandridis, a low-radar entrepreneur with a limited corporate profile whose home was shot up a decade ago during a night of gang violence on the streets of southwestern Sydney.

Alexandridis was the high-value target of Strike Force Candice, a multi-agency probe into unexplained wealth and money laundering, and an investigation jointly-run by the NSW Organised Crime Squad and the NSW Crime Commission.

As officers moved through the Jandegian’s home on Kambala Road, additional teams of police were simultaneously executing warrants in Sydney’s east and south: in Elizabeth Bay, Woollahra, in Dolan’s Bay and in Mosman, where Alexandridis was arrested and taken to Manly Police Station.

Garrett and Stephanie Jandegian.

Someone else was caught up in the daylong operation as well: Stephanie’s father, Serge Golman, a 59-year-old construction industry figure who’d been struck off as a director by ASIC in 2020. Golman was pulled over by police during a targeted vehicle stop.

He was spoken to by officers and his mobile phone was seized for examination, along with that of a second man, aged 50, travelling with him.

By the end of the day, police had allegedly confiscated an array of mobile phones, nearly a kilogram of cocaine, about half a kilogram of silver bullion and more than $1m in luxury goods.

To whom these items belonged (to say nothing of the silver bars and yayo) isn’t clear.

To be sure: we’re not suggesting any link to the Jandegians.

Alexandridis was the only person to be charged during the events of that morning.

He was granted bail during a brief appearance in Manly Local Court and he is scheduled to reappear next week to answer a charge of recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime with intent to conceal.

The Jandegians remain accused of no crime, but their emergence on the periphery of a money laundering investigation, and their interest to detectives, has fast raised questions over the provenance of the young couple’s staggering wealth.

The Bellevue Hill mansion.

Press articles have documented their acquisition of trophy homes, including a $5m house in Vaucluse, a $15m property in Bellevue Hill, the $27m estate that was raided by police, and, most recently, a $4.2m luxury apartment located in Sydney’s redeveloped Sirius building on Sydney Harbour.

Stephanie is a former television bureau chief for A Current Affair who sits on the advisory board for the Starlight Foundation. She has previously attributed the couple’s buying power to Garrett’s entrepreneurial success with Aqualove, a business he co-founded to sell pH-balanced alkaline water.

We’ve written this previously: the business turned a buck, but the market for fancy water is tiny in Australia. It’s basically Tim Gurner buying and that’s it.

The economics aren’t there for gushings of liquidity, certainly not at the level required for a lifestyle befitting a Kardashian and the purchase of multimillion-dollar piles around Sydney.

Adding Stephanie’s father to the mix of characters swept up in this operation only leavens the intrigue even more. A construction industry director, he recently finished a four-year ASIC ban for “acting improperly” in his role directing four companies between 2008 and 2015.

ASIC alleged that Golman withdrew $1.6m from Lidcombe Plastering Services at a time when it wasn’t in the company’s interests and when he knew it had substantial tax debts.

It also found that he’d made payments of $999,568 from the company’s accounts “to the benefit of his wife”.

Golman put up a fight, however. He appealed this all to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but the case was dismissed in 2022.