David Stewart is not a name widely known to Australia’s business community despite owning one of the country’s largest spray paint companies and amassing an industrial property empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
asserted
Stewart → know → dollars
Until this week, Stewart lived a relatively anonymous life.
asserted
Stewart → live → life
Behind a high fence in Neutral Bay near Sydney Harbour, he has no doorbell, no public front-door access and no mobile phone.
asserted
he → have → doorbell
But among a select group of commercial real estate agents on Sydney’s northern beaches, he is renowned for his Bentley, a seemingly insatiable appetite for cigars, and the dozens of warehouses he purchased from Warriewood to Frenchs Forest.
asserted
he → renowne → Forest
Little do they know, David Stewart was not always David Stewart.
asserted
Stewart → know → ?
Unlike David Stewart, Oshri Schwarz is a well-documented name on Melbourne’s court records as both a barrister and a defendant.
asserted
Schwarz → document → barrister
Among those who remember him, all talk about his ostentatious tastes and penchant for cigars.
asserted
all → remember → cigars
Corporate records, not a plume of cigar smoke, reveal Stewart and Schwarz are the same man.
asserted
Stewart → reveal → smoke
From 1992 until 2001, Schwarz’s surname was slowly expunged from a slew of company records.
asserted
surname → expunge → records
Those who knew Schwarz by that name when he lived in Melbourne have never forgotten him.
asserted
he → know → him
“He was a buffoon,” said semi-retired lawyer Paul Connor, for whom Stewart was an articled clerk after he graduated from law.
asserted
he → say → law
“He tried to take over the office from day one.
asserted
He → try → day
He’d smoke these huge cigars and puff himself up to his full height to make these ridiculous pronouncements about the way things should be run, and pontificate about the world as if he was some sort of colossus.
asserted
he → smoke → colossus
From day one, it was a foregone conclusion that by [the end] of that one-year placement, he would be gone.”
asserted
he → go → placement
Peter Chadwick KC, who graduated from law alongside Stewart from Monash University and was a member of the same readers group, also recalls Stewart’s tendency for flamboyance.
asserted
who → graduate → flamboyance
“He was a bit of a peacock, really,” said Chadwick.
asserted
Chadwick → say → peacock
“Oshri would hold his own in the world as a hail fellow well met.
asserted
Oshri → hold → fellow
He likes to give a good impression but there was nothing behind it.”
asserted
He → like → it
Within a few years of being admitted as a barrister in 1981, Schwarz’s name disappeared from the Victorian Bar Roll.
asserted
name → admit → Roll
Others from that time say Oshri later called himself Richard Schwarz.
asserted
Oshri → say → himself
His cousin, Iris Lustig-Moar, daughter of the late prominent property developer Ted Lustig, remembers him as “a strange man”.
asserted
cousin → remember → man
Brother Marc Schwarz is disappointed to hear he is still alive.
asserted
he → disappoint → ?
“David Stewart is an arsehole,” he said.
asserted
he → say → ?
“May he drop dead.”
uncertain
he → drop → ?
“I’d rather be in touch with a bowl of Ebola,” he said.
asserted
he → say → Ebola
Marc Schwarz said the brothers fell out over what he claims was Stewart’s move to rip off their mother.
uncertain
he → say → mother
“What kind of person rips off their mother?
asserted
kind → rip → mother
What does that tell you about the person?”
From Melbourne to Sydney
Long before Stewart’s name appeared before the NSW Supreme Court, Victorian Supreme Court records show that in the early 1980s, he purchased a matrimonial home in South Yarra with his wife, then called Helen Schwarz, with the help of $169,000 from his late mother, Hassia Schwarz.
asserted
he → tell → mother
When Stewart moved to Shepparton a few years later, he purchased a business there with another $125,000 from his mother.
asserted
he → move → mother
Around this time, Stewart’s bank balance was further bolstered by $191,000 from Marc Schwarz.
asserted
balance → bolster → Schwarz
When the money wasn’t repaid, Marc Schwarz took action, launching legal proceedings on Christmas Eve 1986 seeking repayment of more than $200,000.
asserted
Schwarz → repay → 200,000
Stuart’s defence is not lodged on court records and the matter was dismissed before any hearing, leaving the results of the dispute unknown.
asserted
matter → lodge → dispute
Six months later, their mother Hassia Schwarz launched her own suit against Stewart for a claim of outstanding debts.
uncertain
mother → launch → debts
According to Hassia’s affidavit lodged before the Victorian Supreme Court, Stewart had told her he would make an offer to settle the payment and if it wasn’t accepted, he had money overseas to drag on any action for more than three years.
uncertain
he → accord → years
Stewart denied making the threat in his affidavit at the time, claiming the money was a gift rather than a loan.
asserted
money → deny → time
The dispute was discontinued before its slated hearing but relations between mother and son never recovered.
asserted
relations → discontinue → mother
When Hassia died in 2012, her will claimed that Stewart’s outstanding debt was an asset owed to her estate.
“I make no provision for my son Oshri Schwarz because I have made substantial loans to him during my lifetime and he has neither paid interest nor repaid any part of them.
asserted
he → die → them
By the late 1990s, Stewart’s business interests had expanded beyond hardware to include the car wrecking and used car parts business, as well as pet supplies and industrial property investments.
asserted
interests → expand → business
In 1999, he purchased a new home in The Rocks, and a year later took over Motor Mates Products.
asserted
he → purchase → Products
He later rebranded it MMP Industrial and transformed it into one of Australia’s spray paint giants.
asserted
He → rebrande → giants
…and 42 more, not listed.
The Aporia
