‘Deal of a lifetime’: The nut roaster, the two husbands and the curious Sydney property sale

An unused Aldi supermarket site in Sydney’s west is an unlikely place for a technology billionaire to put his money. But the almost one-hectare plot of land in Fairfield is where embattled WiseTech Global founder Richard White has made one of his biggest personal investments, bankrolling a multimillion-dollar apartment development with a controversial history.

At the heart of the deal is Mark Merhi, a 50-year-old failed property developer who fled to Dubai with corporate debts of $80 million and was a suspect in a firebombing investigation in the mid-2000s. Merhi also happens to be the ex-husband of Zena Nasser, who married White in July.

Richard White with wife Zena Nasser. The couple married in July.

In September 2020, as his construction and development business was collapsing, Merhi agreed to sell the industrial site in Fairfield to Ahmad Ahmad, who runs a coffee- and nut-roasting business in Lakemba, for an absolute bargain. The price was so low that liquidators of Merhi’s business would later tell creditors the sale may have been an “uncommercial transaction”.

Three years later, White decided to refinance the development. White lent millions of dollars to Ahmad’s business for the former Aldi site and other properties, according to land title documents.

The transaction is a glimpse into the relationship between White, 69, and Nasser, 45, a former criminal lawyer who once represented some of the city’s most notorious gangland figures. Their relationship was thrown into the spotlight amid a recent legal battle between the WiseTech founder and a former lover, Sydney wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan, over a $90,000 furniture bill.

White stood down as chief executive of WiseTech last month after he was accused of bullying and inappropriate conduct. He has denied allegations of improper behaviour. The company has hired law firms Herbert Smith Freehills and Seyfarth Shaw to review the issues first raised by an investigation published by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.

Mark Merhi sold his development site at 366 The Horsley Drive, Fairfield at a substantial loss.Credit: Domain

White said in a statement: “Mark Merhi (who is the father of my stepdaughter) introduced the refinancing deal to me. Which I passed to my finance and legal team for consideration.”

White added: “I am aware that Mark Merhi knows Mr Ahmad. It was through that introduction that the refinancing arrangement for [Ahmad’s company] Scraper was organised.”

This was the deal of a lifetime for Ahmad, 53, who runs Mourad’s Coffee & Nuts. Not only did he pay $13.5 million for the property, which is $5.5 million less than Merhi had spent in 2016, but in the intervening years, Merhi had received approval for a $70 million commercial and residential development on The Horsley Drive site.

The liquidators later appointed to Merhi’s collapsed property empire were troubled by this deal. In an October 2022 report, Stephen Hathway, from Helm Advisory, told creditors it may have been an uncommercial transaction as the site “had a potential sale value of $23,300,000”.

This is not the only time White’s private real estate plays have attracted scrutiny.

After being introduced to Linda Rogan by Nasser in August 2022, White used a company to buy the wellness entrepreneur a $13.1 million mansion in Vaucluse, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. However, just three weeks after Rogan collected the keys, Nasser discovered the relationship and kicked Rogan out of the home. The luxury property was then sold at a $1.6 million loss.

A year earlier, White had used another company to purchase a $7 million luxury Melbourne waterfront mansion for a current WiseTech employee with whom he’d been in a relationship.

White became involved in the Fairfield property deal in August last year. According to mortgage documents, a subsidiary of White’s personal investment vehicle, Realwise Group Holdings, lent millions of dollars and registered mortgages on Ahmad’s Fairfield site as well as another property Ahmad purchased via his company, Sky Rise Projects. The site in Raglan Road, Auburn, was bought in October 2022 for $28 million.

Asked how he had come to borrow money from one of Australia’s richest men and whether he knew White’s wife, Zena Nasser, Ahmad said, “I cannot comment on anything, I am very busy,” before hanging up.

White said in written responses to questions that the Fairfield property was sold by Merhi to Ahmad, “pursuant to an expression of interest run by Colliers and that Scraper Developments was the highest bidder”.

He also said Nasser was not involved in brokering the refinancing deal. “Her only involvement was that Mark Merhi is the father of her daughter,” he said.

While they do “meet or talk occasionally” with Merhi, he said their relationship was “centred around our shared parenting”.

White said he passed on the financing deal to his investment office which has legal, accounting and property investment staff.

“Valuation reports were undertaken by CBRE as part of the due diligence and the loans are at arm’s length and on commercial terms,” he said.

Nasser’s former spouse has had his own unfortunate real estate history. In 2020, NSW building commissioner David Chandler described his company’s 16-storey Auburn Road apartment tower as “an abomination”.

He said the building ticked “about every box” in failing to meet critical benchmarks in fire safety, structure, waterproofing and building enclosures.

The NSW Building Commission launched legal action this month against Merhi over his failure to comply with rectification orders regarding the Auburn tower block. The matter is likely to remain in limbo, with Merhi out of the jurisdiction.

Richard White, Zena Nasser and her daughter.

Merhi and his brother Khalil, who was involved in various Merhi Group companies, were central figures in an inquest into four deliberately lit fires, all using a similar method. These were in Lidcombe, Bellevue Hill and two in Fairfield East, between 2006 and 2010. The fires were linked to organisations or people who’d had “confrontations or disagreements with Khalil Merhi and/or Mark Merhi,” Coroner Michael Barnes found in 2016.

One of the fires destroyed the Lidcombe headquarters of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). A stolen Mazda crashed through the front doors of the CFMEU building and was then set alight. “Drums of accelerant including paint thinners and two car tyres were inside the car, in an obvious attempt to increase the destructive effects of the fire,” said the coroner.

“The conduct of the Merhi brothers towards those with whom they were in dispute whose property was burnt creates a suspicion that they were responsible for the fires,” Barnes said. But there was not enough evidence to make a conclusive finding and no charges were ever laid.

Of interest to the coroner was the number of disputes the Merhi brothers had had with the CFMEU. On May 12, 2010, the day before the Lidcombe firebombing, Mark Merhi had a tense discussion with a CFMEU executive about his company’s alleged breaches of employment and taxation laws. Later that day, in a phone call, Khalil threatened to “take the union down”.

The Merhi brothers did not provide evidence to the inquest. They refused to be interviewed by police or provide statements, according to the coroner.

Six weeks earlier, the CFMEU had launched legal action against Khalil Merhi and his company Merhis Constructions for refusing to let union officials inspect possible safety breaches on his work site.

Khalil told CFMEU officials to “get the f--- off my site” and Merhis Constructions was ultimately fined $12,000. Representing Khalil Merhi in the 2010 court case was his sister-in-law Zena Nasser.

Nasser is a former criminal defence lawyer who once had an array of Sydney underworld figures as clients. These included bikie boss Hassan Kalache, drug importer Michael Ibrahim, the brother of Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim, and gang leader Bassam Hamzy.

Richard White and his second wife, former criminal defence lawyer Zena Nasser.Credit: Facebook

In July 2007, she was banned from visiting jails in NSW because Corrective Services had reason to believe she was forwarding her clients’ calls to their associates outside of prison. She was deemed a security risk.

Nasser had a falling out with the Ibrahim family after she lodged a caveat on the Castle Cove home of Fadi Ibrahim in 2008 when Michael Ibrahim’s $150,000 legal bill wasn’t paid to her firm. However, corporate records indicate Nasser and the Ibrahims buried the hatchet. She was later a director and shareholder of Krazye Dave Pty Ltd, a company associated with one-time Notorious bikie gang enforcer Sofe Veiru Levi, better known as “Crazy Dave” Lima. Michael and Sam Ibrahim were involved with Notorious. When Nasser’s caveat on Fadi Ibrahim’s house was lifted in 2010, her signature was witnessed by her then-husband Merhi.

Now based in Dubai, Merhi is involved in the family business Merhis Perfumes, which sells fragrances in bottles with “diamonds on the 18k gold letter pendant”. White and Nasser recently visited Dubai. It is unclear whether they met with Merhi.

“Separate yourself from the crowd and savour the scent with the feeling of splendour and glory,” says Merhis Perfumes website, which lists its address as a suite in a luxury hotel in Dubai.

Attempts to call the perfume business were unsuccessful.

Back in Australia, there was little for the liquidators to savour as they picked through the wreckage of Merhi’s development empire.

In Hathway’s October 2022 statutory report to creditors about the collapse of Merhis Fairfield, the liquidator said that efforts to unravel the company’s affairs were stymied by having no books and records.

On Christmas Eve, 2021, Merhi appointed a new director to his company, Mike Tarsissi, a computer repairman who ran Merhi’s IT department. Tarsissi told the liquidators that the books and records were located at the company’s former registered office, which turned out to be a vacant block of land, according to the liquidator’s report.

When it collapsed in June 2022, Merhis Fairfield was using the same registered address as Ahmad’s Scraper Developments – the office of Sydney accounting firm Lion Sterling. Ahmad was not involved in Merhis Fairfield.

One of Ahmad’s close business associates is developer Joseph Samia, 51. The pair has other developments in Prestons, Botany and a former mine site 30 kilometres outside Bathurst.

In 2015, the NSW Crime Commission examined Samia about his knowledge of a Leichhardt property, which was the subject of a proceeds of crime application. Marouf El Hassan, who was jailed for a maximum of 15 years in relation to a cocaine importation from Panama, had allegedly purchased the property at a substantial discount. The outcome of the examination is not known. Ahmad was not involved in the property.

Samia has also been in business with Savas Guven, a Mosman property developer, who is facing a three-month-long trial in August 2025, over one of Australia’s biggest drug importations. Since Guven was refused bail, Samia has become a director with Guven’s wife, Jade, of Rhodes Station Property Holdings, which purchased a $4.5m property in Rhodes. The property has a NSW Crime Commission caveat on the title to prevent its sale.

White said he had “never heard” of Samia or Guven.

“Given RealWise Finance was taking over an existing financing arrangement from a finance company, the only involvement with Mr Ahmad related to ‘Know Your Customer’ checks on Mr Ahmad and the companies that held the properties and the financing arrangement,” White said.

“In addition, new valuations and due diligence were undertaken by my investment team and a review of the terms of the previous mortgage holders’ documents was undertaken by Allens.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.