Crikey

I have found Sydney’s biggest illegal brothel. It is smack bang in the middle of Sydney CBD and trades directly opposite the Hilton Hotel in Pitt St. Zanadu has 21 rooms, spas, sauna, club lounge, gym and locker rooms. Crikey readers can take the guided tour of the establishment which, according to its website, has been operating for 18 years.

Previous directors of the company that operates Zanadu are Shane Dye and James Warren Byrnes, a former Alan Bond associate, and involved in the Bris Connect fiasco.

The City of Sydney council refuses to close the place down. Their idea of brothel regulation is to hit them over the head with a feather.

Council’s velvet-gloved compliance officers have told me that the business has council consent to operate as a health and beauty business, but not as a brothel. Instead of closing them down and bringing the operators before a court the council wrote to Zanadu on 1 April 2009 and issued an order to cease operating as a brothel and revert back to the health and beauty business they were given consent to operate as.

Crikey understands that the owner of Zanadu, after receiving the letter, rang the council and expressed their astonishment that the place was operating as an illegal brothel. They promised to sack the manager and get the place back to operating as a health and beauty business.

But I sent an operative down there on Monday and I can confirm it’s business as usual.

Do councils live in a fantasy world? Do they really think they will obey this silly directive and not operate as an illegal br-thel? Do they think Zanadu is going to sack the hundred or so prostitutes they have on their books masquerading as qualified service providers and replace them with genuine therapeutic masseuses? Of course not!

How on earth did council allow a place this size and in their location to fly under the radar for so long (according to the website, they’ve been around for 18 years)?

I believe it’s a great opportunity for the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) to go down to the council and have a look at the file and see who has been green-lighting the place. Allowing Zanadu to trade undetected for nearly two decades and then not taking strong enforcement action would surely be seen as a corruption risk by ICAC.

By not taking strong enforcement action against the owners, the council is sending a green light to the unscrupulous to set up more illegal br-thels within the City of Sydney.

The government introduced new laws in 2007 to crack down on illegal brothels. The Zanadu situation is consistent with many other councils across Sydney who take a laissez faire approach to br0thel regulation. But if councils are not going to enforce the law then Premier Nathan Rees has to take action.

Remember Nathan Rees? He’s the bloke that thought everything was fine with his brothel laws until he found there was one on top of his electoral office last year.

Sydney now has over 11,000 pr-stitutes plying their trade in legal and illegal brothels and people working from home. It is getting out of control.