A red vest, gold watch, and $165k secret: The elderly millionaire who funded a Liberal takeover

July 28, 2026 — 5:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Moments before the Independent Commission Against Corruption started prising open the juicy details of a five-year campaign of personal greed and political ambition, an elderly man dressed in a red vest, yellow tie, charcoal suit and sparkling gold watch shuffled into the hearing room and took a seat in the public gallery.

Regrettably for Michael O’Hara, he was not a casual observer. Instead, the softly spoken millionaire hotelier had the dubious honour of being the first witness at a blockbuster inquiry probing the murky links between the NSW Liberal Party, fugitive developer Jean Nassif, and a cluster of other questionable characters.

To make his situation worse, the 83-year-old O’Hara has stage-four cancer – a melanoma on his right lung – and is undergoing chemotherapy. His wife died last year.

Looking as though he’d be more accustomed to the plush wing chairs of the Australian Club than the witness box of a major corruption hearing, O’Hara took notes on a tatty writing pad throughout the morning as the extent of Operation Rosny was outlined in breathtaking detail. At one point, he walked into a packed media room and said a polite “G’day” before realising where he was and making a hasty retreat.

O’Hara is arguably a relatively small player in a series of complex schemes which have been unpicked by ICAC investigators since 2022. But his involvement demonstrates the lengths some went to conceal their activities.

The funds handed over by O’Hara and others propped up a long-running campaign by a group of right-faction agitators named the Reformers to........

© The Sydney Morning Herald