Former City to the Lake project director Tim Xirakis said he had been "unceremoniously dumped" from the Land Development Agency in 2015 without clear reason.
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He had been called into a meeting with bureaucrats Ben Ponton and Nicholas Holt about 4pm on September 9 2015 and been told to go by 5pm, Mr Xirakis told an ACT parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.
The officials had "probably spent more time telling me about all my confidentiality requirements rather than telling me why after four years in multiple roles, I was being what felt like unceremoniously dumped," he said.
At 5.01 his calendar and contacts had been removed and his email stopped.
"I could only assume ... something I knew ... has really spooked someone and they thought the best course of action to deal with that was to remove me. That was the only assumption I could make given the circumstances. I haven't had other alternatives put to me," he said, also accusing the government of making it very difficult for him to get work in the private sector since.
"It was a tough period and I was absolutely shocked."
Mr Xirakis said he had been City to the Lake project director for since mid 2014. In June 2015 his contract had been extended and he had been told he had been doing "a magnificent job". He still didn't understand why his contract had been terminated.
Earlier, Mr Dawes told the inquiry that he had been "disappointed" that record keeping had been poor and relationships with the bike and boat hire businesses had soured, so had let Mr Xirakis go.
Mr Xirakis began negotiations to buy the Glebe Park block in 2014, with a valuation putting the block at $900,000 to $1 million - a figure rejected by the property owners.
Then in June 2015 he discovered a deal had been done without his knowledge between the Land Development Agency and the four property owners, Graham Potts, Barry Morris, Richard Tindale and Joe Bisa.
He had discovered the deal about June 25 while he was in Brisbane to discuss engineering options for Parkes Way, when he had received a call saying a contract had arrived for $3.8 million. He thought the owners were "trying it on", he said.
"I didn't think it was a real transaction," he said. "... I told them to send it back, it was clearly a mistake, something that happened without my knowledge on my project on a parcel of land that I had started a process on, I couldn't fathom that i wouldn't be involved in follow up negotiations."
Both officers were in charge of managing land acquisitions had also been unaware of the deal, he said.
"That was alarm bells to me because these are the people who have to decide whether it fits inside the cap or not and therefore whether it goes to cabinet," he said.
The $3.8 million price was agreed at a meeting on June 19 between Land Development Agency deputy Dan Stewart and Mr Potts. Mr Stewart told the inquiry he was working on figures agreed by agency chief David Dawes.
Mr Stewart said a cabinet sub-committee had decided in May 2015 to make a submission to Infrastructure Australia to lower Parkes Way, which meant moving the stormwater pond on parkes Way, which meant buying the Glebe Park land. As a result, he had negotiated the purchase in June.
Mr Xirakis said he had been fired on the same day that the Glebe Park sale reached settlement in September.
