Inside a grubby political blackmail plot that backfired spectacularly

On January 8, 2022, four newly elected councillors gathered at the Crossways Hotel in Strathfield to divide the spoils of political war. Little did they know the meeting would trigger one of the grubbiest feuds in NSW politics, and feature in a major corruption inquiry four years later.

Over lunch and drinks that Saturday, real estate agent Matthew Blackmore, kidney transplant recipient Karen Pensabene, migration agent Sandy Reddy and lawyer-cum-development executive Sharangan Maheswaran struck a handshake deal over who would become the mayor of Strathfield Council following elections the month prior.

The agreement was for Blackmore, an independent, to take the job for at least one year and then hand it over to Pensabene, a Labor councillor. Everyone seemed happy. The only problem was that Blackmore ended up liking the job a little too much. With a big mortgage and rising interest rates, he also liked the $46,010 allowance that topped up his meagre annual councillor fee of $21,000. When the time came to hand over the mayoral chains, Blackmore wavered, and all hell broke loose.

At the Artisaint cafe in Burwood in early 2023, Blackmore told Pensabene and Maheswaran that he wanted to stay on. Anticipating he might say that, the Labor duo helpfully produced a resignation letter written in Blackmore’s name, and told him to sign it.

Maheswaran allegedly told the mayor: “I’ve got a reputation in the party that if I don’t like someone, they don’t get away with crossing me. It would take me about six weeks to take you down.” Blackmore told Maheswaran to “get f---ed”.

Within days, the campaign to assassinate Blackmore politically was in full swing. He fielded sudden media inquiries about his relationship with the council’s controversial former mayor, Antoine Doueihi. He also received a text message from Pensabene in which she said Maheswaran was preparing to print 20,000 scurrilous flyers. “I tried to stop him but he is angry!” Pensabene wrote.

Two days later, the highly stressed Blackmore found several yellow and white flyers stuck under the windscreen wipers of his car in Homebush. The document was a good old-fashioned political “shit sheet” full of potentially damaging information about Blackmore, including his past legal difficulties. “And this isn’t even the worst of it – more to come,” the flyer promised. That same weekend, Maheswaran messaged Blackmore with a warning: “If I can’t convince you, I can’t convince you. I only thought to reach out before things got more serious.”

Blackmore fought back tears when recounting the incident to the Independent Commission Against Corruption this week. He also broke down when discussing a meeting in the council chambers at 5.15pm on the same day he found the shit sheet. At that meeting, mayoral aspirant Pensabene and her enthusiastic backer Maheswaran again told Blackmore he had to honour his agreement to quit as soon as possible.

Maheswaran then made a bombshell revelation: he’d had “operatives” following the mayor the past five months. “I’ve got recordings of you and transcripts,” he said.