However, Cr Badalati was seen onstage applauding as investor Yuqing Liu and property developer Wensheng Liu signed an agreement for $130 million to be injected into two proposed Hurstville apartment blocks at a ceremony attended by Chinese media. He also made a speech. “It’s not as if I really knew him well," Cr Badalati said of Wensheng Liu, a man, according to documents filed in the NSW Supreme Court, who had invited him and Cr Hindi to China as part of his "investment committee". "I just met him a couple of times and that was it," Cr Badalati told the Herald. "I was just asked to make a speech about Hurstville and the investment opportunity, basically.” Wensheng Liu, Yuqing Liu, Vince Badalati and Con Hindi at the signing ceremony in Sydney. Contrary to Cr Badalati's claim that he and Cr Hindi footed the bill to stay in Tangshan, Yuqing Liu, whose company Xinfeng hosted the group, said through his lawyers that his organisation paid for the visiting party's accommodation.

Cr Badalati also acknowledged that a month before the trip he and Cr Hindi had been at a dinner hosted by Wensheng Liu in Sydney's Chinatown, where he was photographed next to the developer and investor as an identical agreement between the pair was signed. A week after the international trip, Crs Hindi and Badalati rejected planners' advice at a Hurstville council meeting and voted in favour of adding five more storeys to Wensheng Liu's proposed 11-storey tower on Treacy St, Hurstville. The council also accepted a modest financial offer that accompanied the amendment. The pair again made no declaration about their links to either of the Lius. The pair were then the only two of five panelists to vote for the site moderation as part of the Sydney East Joint Regional Planning Panel on May 4. The application was ultimately refused. Vince Badalati, applauding at rear left, at the Tangshan ceremony in China. At the April 20 council meeting, they also voted to approve a planning proposal from One Capital, another of Mr Liu's companies, to change the zoning of a block on Forest Road, Hurstville, where it was signalled a hotel, shops and apartments would be built. They voted to increase the maximum height and floorspace ratio of the development beyond what an internal report recommended.

The pair also later voted favourably on that development proposal, called the Landmark Square Precinct, during council and committee meetings under the newly-formed Georges River Council, including putting forward a recommendation before the Environment and Planning Committee in June 2018 to scrap affordable housing at the site. This resolution had been passed in August 2017, while the council was in administration. Following the Herald's inquiries, a spokesperson for Georges River Council said it was investigating the pair for alleged misconduct. The Herald also understands Crs Hindi and Badalati have been referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, as well as the NSW Office of Local Government. An ICAC spokesperson said the body could neither confirm nor deny whether it had received referrals about or was investigating particular individuals. Cr Hindi, who successfully appealed against a two-month suspension for misconduct in 2016, did not return calls from the Herald.