Business owners were left in ruins. Foreign students and workers were homeless and lucky to be alive.

However, the owner of an industrial property in Alexandria that caught fire last year, destroying four small business and an illegal shanty set-up housing 15 Japanese and Korean nationals, has walked away from the disaster with almost $4 million.

Police interview Masaaki Imaeda at the scene of the fire in Alexandria last July. Credit:Peter Rae

Masaaki Imaeda, 55, has not been fined nor prosecuted by the City of Sydney council almost a year after his industrial property on Burrows Road caught fire in the early hours of July 2.

Mr Imaeda was charging people up to $160 a week to live illegally on the site in shipping containers, a graffiti-riddled bus without wheels and decrepit caravans stacked on top of each other.