The daughter of a fugitive property developer has managed to sidestep a jail sentence, with a Sydney judge ruling she was "not some sort of proxy for her father." Ashlyn Nassif, 32, pleaded guilty in June to providing false or misleading information to secure a $150m construction loan from Westpac for three apartment towers in Sydney's north-west in 2021. Her lawyer, Murugan Thangaraj SC, argued on Monday that her "notorious" father, Jean Nassif, played a significant role in the crime, and the court heard she had succumbed to pressure from him when she falsified documents.

Judge Christopher Halburd sentenced Ashlyn to a six-month community corrections order without supervision, noting that "the defendant before the court is not Jean Nassif, she has not been charged and sentenced today in relation to the vast array of things apparently her father has done." The court accepted that "if she hadn't been under the sway of her father she never would have committed an offence at all," and took into account her major depressive disorder. Ashlyn sobbed as the sentence was handed down.

Thangaraj painted a picture of a controlling father who told his daughter to lose weight, undergo weight-reducing or cosmetic surgery so "she could look better and he could show her off," and described her as "hardly the glamorous heiress as portrayed." Jean Nassif, the head of failed construction firm Toplace, fled Australia for rural Lebanon in 2022 and is being pursued by NSW police over a two-year fraud investigation. A warrant has been issued for his arrest, and 57 companies linked to Toplace are in administration. The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) is also investigating allegations that NSW Liberal powerbrokers took a $2m payment from Nassif in breach of the Electoral Funding Act. Nassif had offered to appear at Icac via video link but produced a medical certificate to excuse himself. "How any person could leave their child to face charges like this for his company's benefit," Thangaraj said, adding that Nassif had told his daughter he was "desperate" for the Westpac loan. The prosecution had argued Ashlyn knew the transactions were not "at arm's length," a point the defence disputed.