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Returning to the NSW Icac’s Operation Rosny: Reformers member Robert Assaf has been giving evidence about the breakdown of his friendship with fellow Reformer Christian Ellis.

Assaf had described beginning to distrust Ellis over the payment of a 10% finder’s fee to Assaf for signing up new clients to lobbying company Beckington.

He today described becoming concerned about Ellis’s links to the fugitive property developer Jean Nassif . Last week, he gave evidence that the Reformers became concerned that Ellis was “getting rich” from payments to the group.

Icac is investigating the allegation that between 2020 and 2023, Liberal figures, including Ellis, solicited or accepted donations “in exchange for the pursuit of outcomes sought by Mr Nassif”.

Under questioning from counsel assisting, Peggy Dwyer SC this morning, Assaf also discussed being concerned after being told that Ellis “may have been trying to … hit up some members of parliament” for public money, including their communications budgets.

Assaf says he spoke to one of the MPs, former NSW upper house Liberal Lou Amato , and advised him against giving money to Ellis.

Dwyer : So you were saying: ‘Don’t give him your comms budget, your public money comms budget to fund effectively the work of the Reformers’.

Assaf : No, I don’t think it was for the Reformers.

Dwyer : OK, so it was for him personally?

Assaf : I don’t know what he was going to do with it. I just didn’t, and I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get out of there.