Rose Bay's Lapin House sold as knock-down rebuild for $16.6 million

The Rose Bay modernist home of bankrupt former mining executive Ian Stolyar and his wife Beth has sold on the quiet for $16.6 million as a knock-down rebuild to London-based expat foreign exchange dealer Tony Collick.

The waterfront property was designed as Lapin House in 1949 by the late architect Neville Gruzman for his aunt Mollie Lapin, and long owned by former High Court judge Michael Kirby and his partner Johan van Vloten after they bought it in 1976 for $190,000 from lawyer Peter Murphy.

Mr Kirby and Mr van Vloten sold the residence to the Stolyar family in late 2014 for $10.7 million, two years before Mr Stolyar was declared bankrupt.

The property was lodged in the name of Stolyar’s mother, Faina Stolyar, sparking a dispute between the family and their bankruptcy trustee over its beneficial ownership.

A caveat lodged on title early last year claimed “the property was purchased with the funds of Ian Stolyar and Beth Nguyen“, and the property was subject to a search warrant by the Australian Financial Security Authority last June to discern if Ms Faina Stolyar lived at the residence.

But Justice John Griffiths of the Federal Court accepted that the Rose Bay house was home to both the Stolyars and his mother Faina when he gave consent for the Stolyars to travel to Hawaii to celebrate the eighth birthday of their daughter last September.

The bankruptcy trustees lifted the caveat last month and a week later it was sold off-market to Collick, who in 2002 co-founded Japanese company FXOnline  offering clients commission-free forex dealing.

Local sources say the property was sold by The Agency’s James Alegre, but he was not contactable for comment on Saturday. 

The property is expected to be a rebuild by Collick, whose current Sydney base is the north-east corner penthouse atop Hordern Towers in the CBD bought for $3 million in 2014.

Mr Stolyar, a former director at Maryborough Coal, has also been named as one of the beneficial owners of the Bondi Beach sub-penthouse bought by his mother Faina in 2009 for $6.75 million in The Bondi.