For rent: exiled billionaire’s frozen Sydney assets

Exiled billionaire Huang Xiangmo looks to be a little tight on cash of late, what with a $140 million tax bill still outstanding and freeze orders on his worldwide assets.

Not helping matters is the fact he hasn’t been able to return to Australia to live in his Mosman trophy home since 2019, when ASIO revoked his residency on character grounds.

Former Labor senator Sam Dastyari might still be haunting the corridors of Canberra if he hadn’t led Huang out to the championship tennis court in Huang’s backyard to warn him that, according to journalist gossip, his phone was being tapped. But he did, and it was, and Dastyari was ultimately forced to resign from parliament given his close ties to the China whisperer.

But while those freeze orders mean the exiled billionaire can’t sell his former Sydney home, they don’t mean he can’t make money from it. He’s just put it up for rent for $8000 a week.

“Once in a while a truly unique opportunity presents itself to the market,” is the very apt description in its advertising spiel. Indeed, few houses in Mosman could lay claim to the sort of prominence that Huang’s designer digs long garnered.

Purchased in 2012 for $12.8 million, it soon became best known for the conga line of political types lined up out front to pay their respects to the prolific political donor in residence, having missed the 2015 memo from ASIO warning of Huang’s links with the CCP and expectation of access and influence.

Meanwhile, Huang and his wife, “Fiona” Jiefang Huang, have in recent years sought shelter in a $HK520 million ($A95 million) mansion they bought in Hong Kong’s Repulse Bay.

That house is also keeping the Huangs in the manner to which they are accustomed by way of a $HK150 million ($A28.9 million) mortgage on a 12 per cent interest rate.

Comeback kid

Seasoned political operative Alex Dalgleish has landed back on his feet four months after the historic electoral wipe-out of his former boss Peter Dutton, and much of his Liberal Party, in the federal election.

Dalgleish, Dutton’s former chief of staff, has joined John Brenton’s lobbying firm TG Public Affairs to sit alongside Albo’s former chief of staff Michael Choueifate and John Howard’s former adviser Mark Brandon-Baker.

And just in time for Dalgleish to join the firm’s other partners in a quarterly webinar on Friday which is billed at looking at Labor’s second term, and the opposition’s strategy in the face of that.

Dalgleish will no doubt have lots to share, if only what not to do to avoid an electoral rout.

As we reported at the time, Dutton’s campaign did not go swimmingly. A Coalition campaigner said Dutton and Dalgleish’s centralisation of power backfired. “It was their first time in the big job,” the source said. “They wanted to run Dutton’s office and run the campaign too.”

Ah, memories. No doubt everyone is keen to put the blame game to bed and look to the future at just how the opposition is “refining its strategy to reconnect with voters”, as the webinar invite puts it with touching optimism.

TG Public Affairs is the fastest-growing government affairs offshoot of law firm Thomson Geer. Its advisory board is chaired by former senator/Doctor Who fanatic Stephen Conroy. The board includes former deputy prime minister Kim Beazley and former Health Department secretary Jane Halton, a CBD fave for her fatwa against improperly cooked blue steak and bad tasting decaf coffee.

Bargain bin special

Six long years after Mortgage Choice co-founder Peter Higgins listed his Sydney Polo Club on the Hawkesbury River for the princely sum of $75 million, he has finally sold it – at an eye-watering discount.

Settlement records show a sale price of $37.95 million to billionaire bargain hunter Michael Gregg, who two weeks later announced his resignation from the board of his mate Richard White’s WiseTech Logistics.

Gregg has developed a newfound interest in all things equine in recent years. He set up Mulberry Racing in 2023, and in June bought a slot at The Everest horse race, taking the position left vacant by embattled Star Entertainment.

Gregg’s rich-list status owes much to his early and significant stake in software logistics giant, long before White’s amorous charms spilled into the public arena and introduced us to his nickname LinkedIn Lecher.

Gregg previously spent 16 years on the WiseTech board before he resigned in 2022, only to return early this year after four independent directors suddenly quit in protest over White’s new $1 million-a-year consulting role.

Meanwhile, Higgins is still waiting to be paid for the Avalon Beach property, Marara, that he sold two years ago for $40 million to his mate, developer Sammy Soliman.

Soliman’s corporate interests lodged a caveat on title at the time the deal was struck, but that was then withdrawn last year, reappeared a month later, and was withdrawn again in April.

Any fears the deal might have fallen over were dismissed by Soliman, who acknowledged the delay in settlement but said it would be finalised by the end of this year, at which point there will be much to be said about two high-end houses currently planned for the site.