When an angry Fairfield councillor stormed out of a council meeting last year, he left behind a piece of paper which confirmed what many had long suspected: Joe Tripodi is still pulling strings in the shadows.
Joe Molluso's piece of paper was a printout of an email from Tripodi. It revealed that the tentacles of the controversial former Labor MP for Fairfield had crossed political parties and had now entwined members of the Liberal party.
It also confirmed long-held anxieties within the Fairfield community that in local politics party loyalty pales beside personal ambitions and property dealings.
A Fairfax Media investigation has uncovered an extraordinary string of such unholy alliances which have damaged both major parties and threaten to destroy the council.
Labor councillor Del Bennett, who also received the Tripodi email, is the partner of state MP Nick Lalich.
Mr Lalich, the Opposition whip, is a former mayor of Fairfield, who has been a business partner of Liberal councillors Molluso and Peter Grippaudo.
Cr Bennett has previously been caught leaking confidential information to Cr Molluso, tipping him off that he was about to be prosecuted by their council over what was described in parliament as a "shonky" development.
Despite being on opposite sides of the political fence, throughout last year Cr Molluso worked in secret with Cr Bennett, Mr Tripodi and on a common purpose: to oust Labor mayor Frank Carbone.
While refusing to comment on the secret meetings, Mr Tripodi sent a text message to Fairfax Media suggesting it was their mutual dislike of Cr Carbone which united the councillors.
They are tired of Cr Carbone's "gigantean dummy spits," he claimed.
Mr Tripodi claimed that Cr Carbone had "fabricated a puppet master story about my supposed control of councillors."
The onetime powerbroker, who has been expelled from the ALP, also boasted that Cr Carbone would have been nothing without his patronage.
"I ran his campaign, wrote his policies, produced all his publications … Frank Carbone was given position and power on a platter," he said. But the power had gone to his head, Mr Tripodi offered.
Although Mr Tripodi and his allies managed to have Cr Carbone dumped from the Labor ticket and then expelled from the party for running as an independent, Cr Carbone scored the ultimate revenge.
In last September's mayoral election he beat off his two challengers for the mayoralty – Mr Tripodi's acolytes Cr Bennett and Cr Molluso.
"The people of Fairfield decided factional members were wrong in knifing a sitting ALP mayor just to promote their own personal deals and interests," said Cr Carbone of his victory.
The Liberals have seen their own internecine wars tear apart the local branches. Dai Le, the state liberal party's preferred candidate, and former Liberal MP Andrew Rohan were squeezed out of pre-selection after taking on Cr Molluso and his allies.
The Liberal party's preferred candidates were Peter Grippaudo and Paul Azzo, both one time business partners of Cr Molluso's.
Elected as independents in September's poll, ms le and Mr Rohan have now been banned from the Liberal Party for a decade.
In his candidate declaration form the newly-elected Cr Grippaudo (also known as Fowler) ticked the box saying he was not a property developer. But he remains the CEO of Fowler Homes, which does house and land packages.
He and Cr Molluso, who is also Fowler Homes' solicitor, were found by a corruption inquiry to have acquired bogus academic qualifications in order to obtain a building licence. The Office of Fair Trading later cancelled their licences.
Mayor Carbone's brother Pat was also found to have obtained his building licence in the same fraudulent manner.
Cr Azzo is a Lamborghini-driving former bodybuilder who once worked for the late fraudster Karl Suleman, who was jailed for fleecing millions of dollars from his Assyrian community. Cr Azzo was not accused of any wrong doing.
Cr Azzo was recently accused of offering former Fairfield councillor and local branch president Andrew Nguyen an $80,000 bribe on Christmas Day.
In a statement provided to police Nguyen alleges the bribe was for him to relinquish control over a branch which can determine Liberal party pre-selections. Nguyen also alleged Cr Azzo offered him work as a project manager on home building projects.
Cr Azzo has called the bribery allegations "beyond belief".
"He is either delusional or a liar or both," he said of his accuser.
Meanwhile, the alleged puppet master Joe Tripodi is waiting to hear whether he, like his close ally Eddie Obeid, will be prosecuted for misconduct in public office. This follows a 2016 corruption finding, his second, by the Independent Commission Against Corruption which found Mr Tripodi had done favours while in government for the financially embattled Newcastle businessman Nathan Tinkler.
By all accounts the Fairfield council meeting on April 26, 2016 was a fractious affair. Councillor Molluso was expelled from the meeting after he refused to apologise for calling the mother of his then Liberal colleague Dai Le a drug dealer and then suggesting that the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
But it wasn't fellow Liberals who left in solidarity – accompanying Cr Molluso out the door were Labor councillors Del Bennett and Tan Kien "TK" Ly, both close associates of Mr Tripodi.
Accidentally left behind by Cr Molluso was an email Mr Tripodi had sent to Cr Bennett and Cr Molluso.
Like most of the feuds at the council, it was property rather than policy that caused the bad blood between Cr Carbone and Mr Tripodi.
Local Italians bought land in Prairiewood in 1983 to operate the not-for-profit Calabria Community Club. But 30 years later the lure of millions of dollars to be made redeveloping the club's land tore the directors apart.
Mr Tripodi had been criticised in Parliament in 2006 for pushing Fairfield council to rezone the land while one of its directors, Rocco Leonello, was on his staff. But the then energy minister was unrepentant claiming he was merely supporting the "community club's vision for the site".
In 2011, two days before the rezoning was approved by the state government, Mr Leonello secretly negotiated a mysterious funding deal which a judge later described as a "curious, even suspicious." The deal was orchestrated by Tripodi associate and Fairfield councillor TK Ly.
Cr Carbone's brother Pat took unsuccessful action in the Supreme Court to have an administrator appointed to the club. Pat Carbone had been kicked out as a director after he tried to force the so-called Tripodi camp to provide details about the identity of those behind the mysterious TK Ly loan.
Later, when the club put in its development application, they tried to use the adjoining council land for their development.
But in February 2016 Mayor Carbone took back the council land which the club had been renting for $1 per year for the last 30 years to play soccer.
This decision, which represented a potential loss of $90 million worth of units, infuriated Mr Leonello and Mr Tripodi. It ignited their push to oust Cr Carbone at last year's local government election.
It was yet another property play, this time by Cr Molluso, which lead to the infamous Tripodi email sent to Cr Molluso and Cr Bennett on March 11, 2016.
The printout of the email, which Cr Molluso left behind, showed the trio busy dissecting a newspaper story about an investigation into an embarrassing incident three years earlier where Cr Bennett had been shown providing highly-sensitive information to help Molluso, her supposed political foe.
On 6 January 2013 an anonymous package, consisting of two of Del Bennett's emails, was delivered to all councillors. Misconduct findings were later made against Liberal councillor Zaya Toma who had accessed the emails of other councillors including Cr Molluso with whom he had a toxic relationship.
The printouts revealed that Bennett had leaked confidential information to C Molluso about his forthcoming prosecution by his own council for unapproved building works.
Bennett later claimed that she had not read the contents of the email and did not realise it was confidential.
Cr Molluso had developed a three-storey building comprising shops and residential units in Canley Heights. As well as failing to obtain various council approvals, he had also cut corners, even diverting stormwater run off into the neighbour's property.
As Liberal MP Charlie Lynn told parliament in 2013, "all approvals for this shonky development took place … when Fairfield City Council was effectively controlled by the former Labor mayor, Nick Lalich."
Cr Molluso was later ordered to pay the council's costs after the Land and Environment Court ordered him to rectify a number of defects.
He was also censured by the council for his "thuggish and vindictive" behaviour when he attempted to intimidate the neighbour by reporting minor unauthorised building works at her home.
Two staff members were stood down and then reinstated after they told a tribunal of the culture at the council were boundaries were routinely pushed.
Their union, the Development and Environmental Professionals' Association, wrote a blistering letter to the council in August 2013 outlining staff concerns about highly improper conduct on the part of unnamed councillors who were accused of urging the fast-tracking of assessments and seeking concessions on properties where they were either the developer or an associate of the developer.
Councillors were also accused of turning up at site inspections for their development properties to put pressure on council staff.
They also pressured council staff to drop prosecutions affecting them or their friends.
The union expressed severe misgivings about the council "where the ruling group is an unholy alliance of Labor and Liberals."
This strange political union was evident when council sent confidential details of Cr Molluso's impending prosecution to councillors, warning them it would be "inappropriate" for Cr Molluso to be given "this memo or the attached report as he is a party to this matter."
But that is exactly what Labor councillor Del Bennett did.
The alliance between Cr Bennett and Cr Molluso may be explained in part by a private property development company, Tojomi, in which a string of current and former councillors from both sides of the political fence had an interest.
Mr Azzo has been a director since 2009, Cr Molluso from the company's beginning. For three years up until 2006, Cr Molluso was joined as a director by then Labor councillors Nick Lalich and Bob Watkins and on the Liberal side, current councillor Peter Grippaudo.
Another investor in the mid 2000s was John Vuletich, the council's head of building services. At this time Tojomi scored a $1.7 million windfall selling a Liverpool property after winning approval to develop a nine-storey building. The directors took advantage of a small window of time in which height limits were under review by Liverpool City Council and technically suspended.
When questioned at the time about his business with Lalich, a Labor politician, the Liberal Molluso used a sporting analogy.
"If you follow Leeds United and I follow Liverpool, doesn't mean we can't do business together," he said. "Same with politics."
Meanwhile, a property deal by Mr Azzo has returned to haunt him after councillors last year demanded a fresh investigation into the sale of the Abbotsbury shopping centre and the developers plan to demolish the community hall.
Mr Azzo, as a director of Gratlea Holdings along with his brothers Antoine and Charbel, won a 2004 tender to buy an Abbotsbury shopping centre and community hall from council for $1.25 million.
But at the last moment, another company run by Mr Antoine and Mr Charbel was proffered as the purchase vehicle. No explanation was given as to why a new company, this time without Paul Azzo, was the new buyer. The change was not approved by Council but rather personally signed off by Lalich, the then mayor.
Another Liberal councillor Frank Oliveri, a real estate agent, later declared he had a pecuniary interest in the Abbostsbury deal.
In 2008 eyebrows were raised when Mr Tripodi appointed Cr Oliveri, a Liberal, to the Greater Western Sydney Economic Development Board.
Cr Oliveri was set to be the Liberal's candidate for Federal seat of McMahon until a 2012 Fairfax investigation revealed that Molluso and Oliveri were at the centre of a donation scandal over a 2007 fundraiser at the Marconi Club which raised $50,000, but only $2250 went into Liberal Party accounts.
In 2012 the Liberal party refused to endorse any Liberal candidates for the Fairfield council elections. Cr Molluso ran as an independent.
Cr Oliveri went on to run the unsuccessful campaign by local police commander Ray King to wrest McMahon from Federal shadow treasurer Chris Bowen.
To complete the picture of unlikely alliances in Sydney's southwest, King, now a private investigator, is one of Mr Tripodi's most enthusiastic supporters on the former MP's Linkedin page where Tripodi lists his current employment as "corporate advisory".
Cr Azzo, Cr Grippaudo, Cr Bennett and Cr Molluso did not respond to questions.
