‘I’m the boss, not an employee’: The Sydney strip club owner fighting his ban from Kings Cross

Manthos Papadopoulos did time for bribing a police officer in 1998.

In 2005, his sentence served, he was the subject of bankruptcy proceedings.

But Papadopoulos’ colourful legal history proved no impediment to his subsequently owning and operating two clubs, Sydney Elements and Showgirls, on the same Kings Cross stretch notorious for its history of sleaze, crime and brutality.

It took two alleged violent assaults on women working at his club, one of which involved alleged choking, another where he allegedly slapped his penis in the face of one of the women, as well as a separate alleged assault on a man who visited the club, before Papadopoulos was finally prohibited by authorities.

Last week, the NSW Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal knocked back an application from the Cyprus-born 53-year-old to review a decision of the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority to slap him with a Long-Term Banning Order.

The order prevents him from entering “any high-risk venue in the Kings Cross and Sydney CBD entertainment precincts”.

Papadopoulos had provided the tribunal with supporting statements and affidavits from his wife, Liana Papadopoulos, his mother Cleopatra Papadopoulos and his son, Dimitrios Papadopoulos, as well as a letter from his accountant, Michael Angelopoulos.

But none of it made a difference. Dr Tahlia Gordon, the Senior Tribunal member who heard the case, said she was satisfied “that if Mr Papadopoulos attended Sydney Elements or Showgirls, there is a sufficient risk that he could engage in trouble-making behaviour and cause a problem”.

Such a ban presents a problem for a man who owns two Kings Cross strip clubs. His wife told this masthead he is a good man, husband and father who is innocent.

As Papadopoulos told the tribunal, through his barrister Greg James KC, a former judge, the ban prejudices his business interests and represents a restriction of his “fundamental rights”.

The alleged assaults

It was Sydney Elements, which bills itself as “Sydney’s Premier Stripclub and Nightclub”, and where “VIP packages” start at $1000, where all the trouble started.

On March 15, Papadopoulos was arrested and charged with seven offences which allegedly had taken place in and around the club, including the serious indictable charge of “intentionally choke a person without consent” involving a female employee of the club whom the married man appears to have been involved with.

Six days later, NSW Police informed Papadopoulos they would be applying to the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority for the ban order on him.

Things got even worse for Papadopoulos on March 28, when he was charged with “assault occasioning actual bodily harm” in relation to an incident at Sydney Elements on March 10.

It is understood Papadopoulos will defend all the charges against him.

Still, the accused nightclub owner told police they should drop the ban application. He was entitled to the presumption of innocence. He was “of good character with no prior convictions for matters of violence”, and his bail conditions did not prohibit him from going to Sydney Elements.

In filing his application to reverse the ban, Papadopoulos said “the order has an immediate and substantial impact on my livelihood”.

The tribunal’s decision, handed down last week, contains extraordinary detail about the apparent operation of the club and the alleged violence at least two of its employees had been subjected to.

It also raises questions about the safety of strip club workers in a red-light district that has been somewhat cleaned up over the past decade.

According to police facts, on September 29, 2025, the accused and “Victim 1”, a female employee of the club, were in a private room at Sydney Elements with about 10 other staff members.

It was 3am and Victim 1 was “highly intoxicated and lying on the ground” when, according to police, the accused kneeled next to her, pulled his penis from his pants and “used his penis to slap the side of Victim 1’s face”.

A short time later, police say, Victim 1 was with Papadopoulos at his nearby Potts Point residence, when he told her that “multiple staff members had been traumatised by what happened earlier at Sydney Elements”.

According to police, “Victim 1 was confused as she did not remember what had happened, and the accused stated, ‘It was probably because I put my penis in your face’.”

Embarrassed, Victim 1 wanted to leave the apartment, but Papadopoulos told her if she left, he would kill her.

Cut to 2am on January 9 this year, when Papadopoulos and Victim 1 were behind the main bar at Sydney Elements. They argued, and he allegedly placed his left hand on her head, grabbed a handful of her hair, and yanked her from the chair, snapping her head back with the force of the pull.

Papadopoulos then allegedly grabbed Victim 1 under her armpits and pulled her away from the bar.

The whole thing was captured on CCTV but the accused later told police the footage was “AI-generated and a conspiracy”.

A short time later, another assault is alleged to have occurred when Papadopoulos dragged Victim 1 and another employee, Victim 2, to the basement of the club.

Victim 1 tried to leave, but he grabbed her and pinned her arms behind her back, while pushing her into an office. When Victim 2 tried to intervene, Papadopoulos placed his hand around her throat and moved her away. This alleged assault was also captured on CCTV.

Yet more alleged violence was to come.

At about 2am on March 9, Victim 1 was again at the accused’s Potts Point home, lying next to him in bed, when he straddled her and placed his hands around her neck, restricting her breathing.

He stopped, only to go through her phone to find evidence of her cheating on him. She later took a photograph of her bruised neck.

Things came to a head on March 11, at about 9.30 pm, when Victim 1 and Papadopoulos began arguing while together at Sydney Elements.

She told him she was going to quit on the spot, which allegedly made Papadopoulos angry, and he allegedly pushed her face with force, then grabbed her by the neck and pinned her against a wall, holding her there for about a minute.

He took her phone and locked it in a safe, police allege.

Later that night, he was charged with three offences including common assault, and stalk or intimidate with intent to cause fear of physical or mental harm (domestic violence). Then on March 15, he was charged with another seven offences including the “intentionally choke a person without consent” rap.

A fortnight later, Papadopoulos copped yet another charge, for the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

This charge related to an incident that occurred about 3pm on March 10, when Papadopoulos allegedly beat up a man unknown to him, dubbed Victim 3, who came into Sydney Elements.

According to police, Papadopoulos grabbed the man, whose “body language appeared passive”, shoved him into a wall, dragged and threw him onto the ground, punched and stomped on his torso, and then “kicked Victim 3 directly in the face with such force, causing Victim 3 to fall back on the ground, immediately unconscious and motionless”.

The man suffered concussion, bleeding from a large cut to his lip, bruising to his neck and soreness over his body.

Some of the charges will be heard in November. The remainder will be heard in March next year. Papadopoulos is expected to plead not guilty.

When contacted this week, Papadopoulos’ wife Liana Papadopoulos said: “I know he is innocent and he is fighting for his rights.

“I am not saying that because he’s my partner, I’m saying the truth.

“He is a very good man, good husband and good father.”

Papadopoulos did not respond to attempts to contact him.

These charges are not the 53-year-old’s first tango with the law. In 1998, Papadopoulos passed $1500 to a local cop, when he was operating a different nightclub on the Kings Cross strip.

Back then, Papadopoulos was a 25-year-old with “strong family ties and real prospects of rehabilitation”, or so said his lawyer in a submission to the NSW Court of Appeal in 2000.

Papadopoulos wanted his jail time cut; after all, his sentencing judge had said he “apparently ran a place of entertainment which was otherwise within the law”. His appeal was denied.

Once his time was served, Papadopoulos’ name popped up in the Federal Court list in 2005, as the respondent in bankruptcy proceedings brought by lawyer Victor Berger, who was struck off in 2018 for overcharging an elderly woman by $137,543.

The bankruptcy application against him was granted in September that year.

‘I’m the boss, not an employee’

The goals of the Liquor Act are to regulate the sale of liquor “in a way that is consistent with the expectations, needs and aspirations of the community”, and to “facilitate the balanced development, in the public interest, of the liquor industry”.

The legislation is supposed to minimise harm associated with the misuse and abuse of liquor and ensure that the sale, supply and consumption of liquor contributes to the amenity of community life, as opposed to detracting from it.

Under the act, a Long-Term Banning Order can be imposed if a person has been charged with, or found guilty of a serious, violent indictable offence, and is also the licensee or manager of the premises, or is either working on the premises as an employee, or in a volunteer capacity.

Papadopoulos did not dispute he had been charged with serious indictable offences, namely, two counts of intentionally choke a person without consent, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and stalk or intimidate intending to cause fear of physical or mental harm.

But through his barrister Greg James KC, Papadopoulos submitted that it would be “unjust” to impose an LTBO on someone who may ultimately be found not guilty, and that if the tribunal could not be satisfied the evidence supported the charges, it should not uphold the ban.

But the most creative argument put by Papadopoulos’ barrister was that the ban should not apply because his client was not employed by Sydney Elements.

He was the boss.

James told the tribunal that “at the time of the alleged serious indictable offence, Mr Papadopoulos was at Sydney Elements as the sole director, secretary and shareholder of MLP Investments (NSW) Pty Ltd and Element MP Pty Ltd, the owner of the premises”.

Papadopoulos’s company interests have owned the Potts Point venue since 2013, when it last traded for $4.55 million.

The tribunal heard he has since invested $17 million in Sydney Elements.

It has clearly been a lucrative business. Papadopoulos also owns a Sutherland Shire property with a swimming pool that fronts a private-title beach. A Sylvania property is also registered to his name, and Papadopoulos’ second company, MGM Ventures, owns an inner-west property that is the registered home of his mother.

But the “mere fact” that he was owner and director of Sydney Elements didn’t mean Papadopoulos was an employee, working there or performing services of any kind.

His barrister argued that his client had “overall responsibility for the day-to-day operations of Sydney Elements”, which included tasks like managing staff and overseeing staff rosters.

He works full-time and “needs to be on call to deal with issues at the venues, as and when they arise”.

Furthermore, he did not have a responsible service of alcohol certificate, and as such, was not qualified to serve alcohol. He doesn’t receive a wage.

Papadopoulos’ “fundamental rights”

The respondents, the NSW Police and the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority, counter-argued that Papadopoulos was, for the purposes of the act, a volunteer.

Further, they told the tribunal “that it would be an unusual lacuna in the Liquor Act if someone in the position of Mr Papadopoulos, who on his own evidence asserts day-to-day control over a high-risk venue, was found to be outside of reach of [the act] because he was not the licensee or manager, was not a volunteer, or did not have a written contract of employment”.

The tribunal rejected Papadopoulos’ narrative. Dr Gordon found that “Mr Papadopoulos plays an essential role in managing two high-risk venues in the Kings Cross precinct”.

If he was not technically a worker at the venue, then he was a volunteer.

Papadopoulos argued that his absence from Sydney Elements “has caused significant prejudice” to the operation of the business, and was “untenable because of the issues arising at the premises”, such as “staff conflicts and stock controls”.

The ban would also harm his plans to develop the venue into a five-storey hotel.

Most importantly, the ban restricted his “fundamental rights”.

He was so desperate to have it lifted that he even proposed a compromise: that he could be at Sydney Elements only between 11am and 11pm.

The tribunal rejected it all, and upheld the ban. Dr Gordon said that it “sends a clear message” to “troublemakers”.

A former manager of the now defunct but once popular nightspot Sapphire Lounge, who did not want to be named, said Papadopoulos was “the worst fucking operator in the Cross”.

The former club manager said the LTBO would be pretty useless, seeing as Papadopoulos’ other club, Showgirls, is across the road.

“So he can just stand there, and walk past and do what he wants.”

There is some consolation for Papadopoulos: the ban applies for only 12 months.

And the clock started ticking down on July 8 this year, when it was issued.

As of July 7 next year, depending on the outcome of his criminal proceedings, Papadopoulos will be at liberty to go wherever he likes on the King Cross strip, including into his own clubs.