Australians of the Year 2019

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Codey Herrmann faces court charged with rape and murder of Aiia Maasarwe

By Erin Pearson, Matilda Boseley & Joe Hinchliffe The Age

The man accused of killing 21-year-old international student Aiia Maasarwe has fronted court charged with her murder.

Codey Herrmann, 20, sat silent during the brief hearing at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Saturday afternoon, dressed in a green T-shirt, following his arrest on Friday.

Codey Herrmann

The court heard the aspiring rapper had also been charged with rape. Particulars of the rape charge have not been released, with the court told some of the "specific words" aren't yet known to the family.

A mental health assessment was requested for Mr Herrmann. He made no bail application and was remanded to reappear on Monday.

When magistrate John Doherty asked Mr Herrmann if he knew what he had been charged with, he replied “yes”. “It’s alleged you murdered Aiia Maasarwe and it's alleged you raped that person,” Mr Doherty said.

Liaison officers had earlier tried to prevent Mr Herrmann from being brought up from the cells to the courtroom for the hearing, but Mr Doherty intervened and requested the accused appear.

When he entered the court, Mr Herrmann sat with his head bowed and avoided eye contact with those sitting in the mostly empty room.

On either side of him sat security officers, with no friends or family attending the hearing.

Mr Herrmann, a self-described rapper who went by the name MC Codez, was arrested by police at a park in Greensborough on Friday, two days after Ms Maasarwe was found near a Bundoora shopping centre.

At the same time, homicide detectives and forensics police descended on a derelict, weatherboard house on Grimshaw Street, Bundoora.

Ms Maasarwe was on her way home from a gig at The Comics Lounge in North Melbourne and was speaking to her sister on her phone via FaceTime when she was allegedly attacked.

Ms Maasarwe's death has rocked Melbourne, where thousands have taken to the streets as well as social media to express outrage and grief over yet another unprovoked killing of a young woman who was simply going about her life.

Her father Saeed Maasarwe spoke at a vigil at Parliament House on Friday night, thanking the more than 1000 people who attended, while hundreds took part in an emotional journey on the 86 tram, filling it with flowers and tributes.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison met Mr Maasarwe on Saturday afternoon.

“The words will fail me I’m sure, as one father to another,” Mr Morrison said at an earlier press conference.

Accompanied by his wife and two daughters, Mr Morrison laid flowers on Saturday at the site where Aiia was found.

“I want to thank those other families and other Australians who have just been quietly passing by and paying their respects, and laying down flowers, leaving cards,” he said.

“I had the chance to read some those messages and talk to them. It was very quiet, and I think that the country is very shaken by it, but at the same time as always reaches out and seeks to comfort."

Tom Meagher, whose wife Jill Meagher was murdered in Brunswick six years ago, has taken to Twitter to pay his respects to Aiia and her family.

“I am so thoroughly sick to my stomach of men murdering women," Mr Meagher wrote. "The human cost of male violence is staggering, the incalculable social trauma and human misery it engenders is soul destroying. Its weight is intolerable

“RIP Aiia & love to her family.”

Ms Meagher was raped and killed by Adrian Bayley while walking home from a night out in September 2012.

Mr Meagher has since been an active advocate for women’s rights and safety.

Opal Tower residents face six-week wait to go home, others left out of pocket

 By Rebecca Trigger and Jonathan Hair ABC News

Some residents of Sydney's damaged Opal Tower are facing up to six more weeks living in a hotel before they find out if their apartment is safe after the builder revealed it needed more time to assess the damage.

Key points:

·         No residents have moved back to Opal Tower while independent engineers assess the building

·         Cost of living in alternative accommodation is leaving some residents out of pocket

·         Friday will be the earliest residents can move back in, with experts expected to provide an update

It comes as other residents say they have been left out of pocket after paying for alternative accommodation despite the builder providing a stipend and hotel accommodation.

About 300 people were evacuated from Opal Tower in Sydney's Olympic Park after a loud cracking sound was heard on December 24, and a large crack appeared on the 10th floor.

A crack in the plaster and wall seen on Christmas Eve.

The majority of residents are expected to learn whether they can move back in on Friday.

But some living in the worst-affected apartments have already been told by the builder, Icon Co, they will have to wait much longer before they can go home.

Nika Khodjasteh, 27, was living with her boyfriend and flatmate in a third-floor apartment.

She has been told it will be four to six weeks before she can move back in.

"My assumption is they'll keep us in the hotel or put us in the serviced apartment, but I actually have a cat," Ms Khodjasteh said.

'Some people haven't received money'

Ehsan Jahanandish was originally provided temporary accommodation at a nearby hotel.

But with no end to the ordeal in site, he has now found his own Airbnb to stay in.

"The reimbursement form that we submitted, they haven't been paying them in full, and I know some people, they haven't received any money at all," he said.

"But for us, we have been receiving some money to recover expenses."

Investigations are today taking place in his level 25 apartment, where workers plan to tear open a section of his wall and roof to take a look at the concrete behind.

Mr Jahanandish said he was unsure if he wanted to move back to the tower.

"We are putting our lives in this building, so we are going to live here, sleep here, and we are going to have to make sure that we feel safe and comfortable," he said

He has been told he can move back into the tower on Friday, but he does not believe the timeline.

"It's been devastating, it's been very, very difficult … we are anxious and we are stressed, and we have to start working again."

 "[Builder] Icon is now working with me to provide solutions. And they are being quite flexible, but you know under the circumstances this should have never occurred."

Most residents have been put up in Sydney hotels while engineers assess the damage, and one section of the building has been braced with huge metal jacks to provide structural support.

The ABC understands some residents are being paid around $300 per night in compensation for being forced to move out of a two-bedroom apartment in the complex.

Residents are also reportedly being given $100 per person per day for the cost of food, as not all alternative accommodation has kitchens.

Newlyweds forced out of home

Resident Farzad Rezvani, 35, also moved into Airbnb accommodation after being forced out on Christmas Eve.

The mechanical engineer married just two months ago and had moved into Opal Tower with his wife.

"It's kind of a sad feeling," Mr Rezvani said.

"This unit was our first unit with my wife … so we are kind of attached to this one where we started our married life."

Mr Rezvani said he had trouble contacting the builder to get access to the property to recover their things.

Residents have posted photos of their possessions piled on the floor at Opal Tower.

"When I called no-one was picking up, but when I got here the lady in the reception she was friendly and she said it was OK and gave us access to our unit."

A number of renters are concerned they are still being charged rent while they are unable to live in the tower.

Mr Rezvani said the payments had ceased about five days ago. He said he had been told a stipend would be paid until January 7.

A spokeswoman for Icon Co said a large number of residents had been able to access the building, and a contact email and phone number would be answered by a dedicated team.

She said Icon Co had advised residents on Friday it would pay accommodation costs of displaced residents until January 11, when professors Mark Hoffman and John Carter are expected to make a further statement on the building's integrity.

Jacks were installed as a redundancy measure to ensure structural integrity, she said.

Planning Minister Andrew Roberts issued a statement on Friday last week saying Professor Hoffman and Professor Carter, two independent experts brought in by the NSW Government to review the situation, would need more time to complete their work.

The statement said they did not find evidence of issues with the foundations of the building, but believed there were a number of design and construction issues that required further investigation.

The 392-apartment block only opened in 2018.

It sparked a pledge by the NSW Government to crack down on the construction industry, with Minister for Better Regulation Matt Kean saying he will "throw the book" at building certifiers who have done the wrong thing.

The Government said it would audit 25 to 30 per cent of certification work audited every year.

The rise of Russia's oligarchs — and their bid for legitimacy

By Joey Watson for ABC Late Night Live

Roman Abramovich, seen at the Kremlin in 2016, is one of Russia's most prominent oligarchs.  Getty: Mikhail Svetlov

Roman Abramovich is the owner of the Eclipse, which, at 162.5 metres in length, is the world's second largest privately-owned yacht.

The $500 million boat sits alongside a list of possessions that include a multi-million-dollar art collection, a Boeing 767 plane, and the English Premier League football club Chelsea.

Mr Abramovich, like most Russian oligarchs, found his billions in the carve-up of the Soviet Union's industrial assets in the early '90s, through his connections to the Kremlin.

The oligarchs, sitting atop the most unequal economy in the developed world, can seem almost comical to observers in the West.

But beyond their glitzy extravagance, a complex social transformation is taking place, according to sociologist Elisabeth Schimpfossl.

Dr Schimpfossl, who travelled Russia interviewing oligarchs for a recent book, says the elite are working to legitimise their monied status.

They are, she says, moulding into a class akin to the Soviet intelligentsia or Tsarist aristocracy, using cultural patronage to disguise the often-murky origins of their wealth.

A happy break-up — for some

The Russian ultra-rich amassed their wealth during the economic and social turmoil following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the introduction of the market economy.

Many had ventured into commerce in the 1980s, unaware they were positioning themselves to benefit unimaginably from one of the fastest redistribution of assets in history.

Russia's early post-Soviet elite were from modest social backgrounds who had genuinely benefited from the Soviet education system.

Mr Abramovich, for example, grew up in poverty.

Over the course of the 1990s, a group of bankers and tycoons appeared at the top of the new rich stratum by seamlessly turning their political clout into wealth.

"The early Russian oligarchs seemed to have appeared from nowhere and got their hands on the driving wheel of government," Dr Schimpfossl says.

During the oil price boom that helped fuel President Vladimir Putin's resurgence in the 2000s, Moscow regularly topped rankings of cities with the most billionaires.

"A whole new layer joined them getting rich on the back of the high oil price which lasted until 2008," Dr Schimpfossl says.

"It was almost as important as the first round of privatisation in the '90s."

Mr Putin eventually brought economic liberalisation under his personal control and significantly reined in the oligarchs.

"If they didn't fall out with Vladimir Putin shortly after he came to power, they now prop up his kleptocracy with injections of cash whenever he asks them to," Dr Schimpfossl says.

One of Russia's richest men, Vladimir Potanin, meets with a recently installed President Vladimir Putin in 2002.

Getty: Sovfoto

And while living abroad is popular for many, Russia's oligarchs are being forced to keep a foothold at home regardless of their position in the state apparatus.

A 2013 law forced government officials, their spouses, and children under 18 to divest themselves of foreign stocks and bank accounts.

From yachts to paintings

Inequality in Russia is at staggering levels.

In 2013, the country had one billionaire for every $11 billion of household wealth, a ratio more than 15 times less equitable than the global average.

In a society that is still acclimatising to the idea of private property, these levels pose some challenges for the oligarchs, who are trying to legitimise their extraordinary wealth.

"The oligarchs are usually hated, and the re-shift of wealth in the population is resented by a population who trace their power directly to corruption during the '90s," Dr Schimpfossl says.

"When this first post-Soviet generation passes its wealth on, it will be the single biggest transfer of assets within the smallest group of people ever to have occurred."

Russian oligarchs have now set out to develop more cultured tastes, rediscover their family histories, and actively engage in philanthropy in order to justify their position in society.

According to Dr Schimpfossl, wealthy Russians are seeking to situate themselves in the tradition of the Soviet, and even Tsarist, intelligentsia.

"They may imagine themselves to be living like the Tsarist aristocrats in a Tolstoy novel, and they're brilliant at constructing narratives of their past," she says.

"This allows them to say they are not random people that made it to the top, but they actually have an obligation to be there, even a moral duty."

Key to this is their involvement in culture and philanthropy, reinvigorating the Soviet concept of 'kulturnost' which prescribed that social elites were versed in Russian music and literature.

Igor Tsukanov, for example, is a successful banker who frequently lends pieces of his world-class post-war Russian art collection to museum exhibitions.

Igor Tsukanov's collection of postwar Russian art, including this piece by Tselkov Oleg, is said to be worth well over $100 million.

The Tsukanov Family Foundation, run with his well-connected wife Natasha Tsukanov, is a London-based charity supporting education, arts and culture in Russia and the UK.

"My art is not for myself. My dream is to have a museum, for the best Russian collection outside Russia," he told the Financial Times in 2016.

It is hard to judge whether the ultra-rich of today's Russia will be able to find the social legitimacy Dr Schimpfossl believes they are seeking.

But as the country plans for a new wave of privatisations, they can probably count on getting richer.