Despite splashing out half a billion dollars on property acquisitions last year, one of the nation's largest privately owned development companies, Dyldam, is claiming it is too cash-strapped to pay money to the widow of one of its four owners.
In April 2010, George Khattar was in Melbourne on business when he died from a heart attack.
At the time of his death Mr Khattar, who was 44, was a director of more than a hundred companies, many of them Dyldam-related entities worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, it is almost six years since her husband's death, and apart from a monthly allowance and school fees, his widow Carol Khattar and her two daughters are yet to receive their share of Mr Khattar's estate.
Mrs Khattar is taking legal action against the executors of her husband's estate – his brother Joe and his sister Maria Fayad, who is married to Dyldam supremo Sam Fayad.
Mrs Khattar is understood to have rejected their offer of $300,000 for her husband's 25 per cent shareholding of Dyldam.
According to documents filed with the Supreme Court, Mrs Khattar has raised a number of questions about the executors' conduct in relation to Dyldam operations. For example, her lawyers noted that one company, of which George Khattar was the sole director when he died, owned a property at Turramurra worth $14 million.
That company has since gone into liquidation.
A Fairfax Media investigation previously revealed that more than a dozen of Mr Fayad's and Mr Joe Khattar's companies have gone bust, owing the Tax Office millions.
There is a pattern to their bad luck. Upon completion of the development, having paid Dyldam handsomely for construction services, several units are transferred to their family and friends and shortly after the company goes down the gurgler owing the Tax Office money.
Before the corporate undertakers are called in, the two men exit as directors and a group of women are left to run the troubled entities.
They include Mr Fayad's wife Maria, and Maria's sister Sultaney Khattar.
There is also the mysterious Kerrie Anne Brown, whose whereabouts remain unknown despite Fairfax Media's best endeavours to locate her. She was not known at the addresses listed on corporate documents.
When her husband and brother exited Project 1876 Pty Ltd in April 2013, Maria Fayad was left as the sole director.
The Tax Office has since lodged a claim of $9.23 million against the company which built 112 townhouses in Russell Street, Baulkham Hills.
At the annual meeting of creditors in November 2015, the Tax Office demanded to know whether the administrators had recovered funds from the sale of two units in the development, which were transferred to a company controlled by Mr Fayad and his brother-in-law Joe Khattar only weeks before the administrator was appointed.
Mrs Fayad was also left the sole director and secretary of Plaza West just before it went bust in late 2012 owing $28 million, including almost $5 million to the Tax Office.
Plaza West had built an apartment complex and shopping centre, now called Entrada, in Parramatta.
The liquidators queried whether some properties had been sold at uncommercial rates. These include an apartment sold to niece Renee Chanel Hawach.
The dispute over George Khattar's estate returns to court on Monday.
