Not that the sale was immediately obvious, as Roozendaal acquired his flat off the plan through a company and Arbib's was purchased by his wife, Kelli Field. The Greens MP Sylvia Hale recently told Parliament that local real estate agents in Maroubra said the Labor powerbroker ''Eddie Obeid or his proxy also purchased a Maroubra beachside townhouse''. But Obeid told the Herald he did not own any property in Maroubra nor anywhere in the vicinity and that he had not bought property from Boyd or any Boyd companies. Given he has been a wheeler-dealer extraordinaire over the years, it may have slipped Obeid's mind that shortly before he became an MP, his company parted with $2 million to buy an industrial site on Canterbury Road, Bankstown, from Boyd's company. And while Arbib and Roozendaal were finalising their purchases with Boyd's company, Telmet Ventures, Telmet was successfully lobbying the Labor-controlled Strathfield council to rezone contaminated land at Homebush West. Telmet, which bought part of the site from State Rail, is planning to build up to 1000 apartments there. Boyd has also been a long-time developer in and around the Olympic Park precinct. The connections don't stop there. Brian Boyd's lawyer is Mark Morgan. Morgan is a director of several Boyd companies and he turned up as a shareholder in a company owned by Eddie Obeid's son, Moses. Streetscape Projects sells multipurpose street poles with street lights, banners and security cameras.

Despite coming last in a tender assessment by council officers in 1999, Streetscape was awarded a contract to supply Smartpoles to the City of Sydney, run by then lord mayor Frank Sartor. But Morgan himself was not the shareholder in Moses Obeid's company. The identity of the real investor was hidden within a $2 shelf company controlled by Morgan, who has steadfastly refused to disclose on whose behalf he held the shares. Morgan's $2 shelf companies, which he runs on behalf of unnamed people, donated a massive $230,000 to the ALP between 2002 and 2006. Sydney is a small town. Take the 2007 purchase in Rose Bay by Eric Roozendaal's parents, who spent $1.695 million buying a property in a development undertaken by Allen Linz. Only a few years earlier Roozendaal and Linz had been fellow directors on the ill-fated company Getonboard, which was to offer union members cheap computers and internet access. Other directors included Linz's business partner, David Tanevski, along with Labor luminaries Mark Arbib, Michael Costa and John Robertson. The shareholding of the union-based company was shrouded in mystery, with one shareholder hiding their identity through a company domiciled in the British Virgin Islands. In 2007 eyebrows were raised when Unions NSW, run by John Robertson, now a NSW minister, announced that the successful purchaser of the unions' historic workers' cottages, Currawong, at Pittwater was Allen Linz's company.

Hired by Unions NSW to broker the sale of Currawong was Joe Tripodi's close friend Tanevski, who just so happened to have been in the internet business with Robertson, Roozendaal and Linz, as well as being a business partner of Linz's at the time of the Currawong sale. When asked about Tanevski's role, Robertson said at the time, ''We wanted somebody who understood how property developers operated.'' Tanevski certainly fitted the bill. He had business links with Linz and fellow developer Duncan Hardie. In 2001 Tanevski bought a house from developer Bob Rose in a Rose project, Breakfast Point, at Canada Bay. Breakfast Point, an American-style $1.5 billion residential village complete with its own country club, won the Urban Task Force's Development Excellence Award for a Master Planned Community in 2004. The 39-year-old Macedonian-born Tanevski has been a director of the Urban Task Force, a lobbying organisation for property developers, since 2002. Noel Hemmings, QC, who was also counsel assisting the commission during last year's Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings into Wollongong City Council, has recently been appointed the Task Force chairman, replacing Bob Rose, who held the position for seven years.

Recently elected deputy chairman is Allen Linz, while former directors have included fellow developers Bob Ell and Duncan Hardie. The lobby group's chief executive is Aaron Gadiel, brother-in-law of the Labor MP Tanya Gadiel and a former chief-of-staff to Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid. Sydney's property plays further connect the mates. Tanevski made a $215,000 profit after selling a Woollahra unit he bought only one year earlier from Linz. Tanevski also owned a house in Fairfield with Joe Tripodi's former girlfriend, ex-state minister Reba Meagher. Apart from friendship, Tanevski and Tripodi shared links with the influential property developer Pat Sergi, named in the Woodward royal commission as a principal in the Griffith Mafia. While an MP, Tripodi had shares in a Sergi company which bought and sold government land. Sergi was also a shareholder in Shingle Hill, a company owned by Linz and Tanevski. Tanevski has harboured political ambitions. In 1994 he and his cousin Jim Stefanovski (also known as Stefan) were exposed as being part of a massive branch stack by Labor's right wing to oust a left-wing MP from the seat of Throsby, south of Wollongong. Tanevski was hoping to be preselected.

Stefanovski, who ran a brothel, was later jailed for 6½ years for fraud and gun running. The fact that he was in the clink did not prevent Labor mayor Nick Lalich awarding him one of Fairfield Council's Citizens of the Year gongs in 2003. Lalich, who was elected to the seat of Cabramatta in October last year after Reba Meagher's resignation, had the ignominy of having to rescind Stefan's award. But back to tiny degrees of separation surrounding the Currawong deal. Unions NSW rejected a $30 million bid for the Pittwater retreat put forward by the late Michael McGurk, who was acting for the developer Ron Medich. Before his murder in September, McGurk told the Herald Moses Obeid had helped them with negotiations with Unions NSW's Robertson. Loading

Despite offering double the money, Unions NSW preferred Linz's $15 million bid because, unlike McGurk's, it had no conditions attached. The Herald has learnt that Linz's company has been able to get a reduction of a third of the purchase price because the then planning minister, Kristina Keneally, knocked back its redevelopment plans. But just to prove that the degrees of separation can never be too small, an independent inquiry authorised by Unions NSW found that Tanevski's involvement in the bid was completely above board and there were no conflicts of interest.