‘Optimistic’: The rundown 1920s mansion valued at $27,000 a square metre – and the hire that followed

ALP donor Felix Ming Ze Lee has raised eyebrows with his latest hire to his high-profile private investment office, recruiting a property valuer who had put a $100 million valuation on a Bellevue Hill estate linked to Lee family interests.

Lee’s recruitment of former prestige property valuer Bader Naaman to head up the real estate and lending arm of his Lee Family Office came to light after the bullish valuation was circulated in private credit circles given already onerous mortgage terms on the property.

Naaman resigned as a valuer from real estate giant CBRE a few months after he undertook the valuation that effectively crowns the rundown property as among the most expensive in Bellevue Hill.

The valuation of the property “Tokay” makes it more expensive on a “per square metre” basis than similarly large-scale properties such as billionaire James Packer’s family estate Cairnton and the nearby $130 million Elaine estate in Point Piper.

This masthead is not suggesting any impropriety or wrongdoing regarding the valuation or Naaman’s appointment.

Felix Lee’s private investment firm was thrust into the spotlight early this year when the 25-year-old appointed former federal treasurer Joe Hockey as chairman. Naaman joins the firm alongside another more recent recruit, Gareth Hammond. The former course superintendent-turned general manager of the Lee family’s Terrey Hills Golf and Country Club was appointed chief operating officer at Lee Family Office earlier this year.

Last month, Lee hosted an unofficial Labor Party fundraiser at his Point Piper mansion by way of a dinner party in honour of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The revelation, first reported by The Australian Financial Review , included that among the 10 guests were CBA chief executive Matt Comyn, former CBA bank boss David Murray, former ASIC chairman James Shipton, former HSBC chief Antony Shaw and former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.

Felix Lee established the family office in 2024 in a bid to separate his interests from his billionaire father Phillip Dong Fang Lee, a high-roller gambler who put $2.2 billion through Star City casino and was later embroiled in a tax dispute over a $280 million debt.

In the course of that tax dispute in the Federal Court, a detailed affidavit by a top-ranking tax official alleged that Phillip Lee orchestrated “sham” financial arrangements designed to conceal the true source and character of foreign income, and detailed suspicions that he secretly controlled business and financial interests in China despite earlier vowing to the Australian government that he had sold his Chinese business assets.

The proceeding has since settled with no admission of liability or wrongdoing, but the debt is yet to be repaid in full, and the Tax Office retains a mortgage over the Australian property empire of Phillip Lee and his wife, Xiaobei Shi.

Phillip Lee’s links to the Bellevue Hill property, long known as “Tokay”, were revealed in the Tax Office’s explosive affidavit.