The billionaire, his lawyer wife – and the secrets of their explosive relationship

Richard White and Zena Nasser.Credit: Artwork – Stephen Kiprillis

On a Sunday afternoon in October, guests carrying luxury gifts from Dior and Hermès were shepherded into Richard White’s Palm Beach mansion.

The occasion was a commitment ceremony to mark White’s marriage to Zena Nasser in Texas three months earlier, and the arrival of a daughter born via surrogate. A posse of Nasser’s friends from Sydney’s eastern suburbs accounted for much of the guest list.

But noticeably absent were White’s family and friends from his days as a self-described tech nerd from Bexley, in Sydney’s south. Many of White’s long-time friends were unhappy about the marriage, given the couple’s volatile history, which includes concerns of potential blackmail and assault.

Just days earlier, a bomb had been dropped on the WiseTech Global founder and his new wife. A year-long legal stoush between White and Sydney wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan had spilled out into the open as Rogan made allegations in the Federal Court that White expected her to have sex with him in return for the billionaire investing in her business.

Guests arrive at the Palm Beach ceremony for Richard White and Zena Nasser in October 2024.Credit: Oscar Colman

While White and Nasser were all smiles as they professed their love for each other, most of the guests at the party were talking in hushed tones about Rogan. Cracks were now appearing in the glamorous life of White and Nasser as they jetted between their string of houses in Sydney, Dubai and Geneva.

A joint investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, provides a disturbing insight into the relationship between White and Nasser.

A series of emails, correspondence and draft legal documents show White tried to leave the relationship in 2022, alleging Nasser assaulted, threatened him and demanded $50 million in cash and assets, including the Palm Beach mansion.

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

“I don’t trust you,” texted Nasser, according to messages White provided to his advisers when he was drafting an affidavit in 2022. She suggested his behaviour was inappropriate and that “each and every one of my friends has thought you were a creep”.

She also threatened to leak details of a confidential settlement with one of White’s previous lovers. “I’m emailing everything to Joe Aston [then columnist at the Financial Review) ... go f--k your illiterate employee you sick man.”

Zena Nasser when she worked at Boyuan Holdings in 2020.

“Goodbye and good luck with the fallout,” she texted.

White and Nasser’s tumultuous interactions sparked such a concern that the billionaire assembled a legal team and a private investigator to help manage the relationship.

“If we were to fulsomely disclose to the police what has transpired then we may expose Zena to criminal charges for blackmail,” one of White’s key advisers, lawyer Stratos Karousos, said in an email to White on May 12, 2022, after seeking advice from a barrister.

Nasser’s demands and White’s plans to extricate himself from the relationship are outlined in a 36-page draft affidavit prepared but never sworn by White and his lawyers towards the end of May 2022.

At the time, White’s wealth was exploding. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted global supply chains, the share price of logistics software firm WiseTech began a meteoric rise from about $40 to the more than $120 mark it sits at today. White co-founded WiseTech in 1994. He still holds 37.4 per cent of the logistics company, which has helped him amass a $16.5 billion fortune.

Instead of leaving Nasser, two years on from his explosive draft affidavit, the pair are married. Thanks to changes in White’s will, Nasser, 45, is in line to become WiseTech’s largest shareholder when White, 70, dies. Nasser’s sister Sue is an executor of White’s estate, along with the billionaire’s brother Andrew and stockbroker Charlie Aitken, who attended the Palm Beach celebration with his wife Ellie.

Linda Rogan sued Richard White in the Federal Court.

Given their tumultuous relationship, his second wife’s growing influence in his business affairs has sparked concern among long-time friends and associates. The saga concerning White’s behaviour and his personal life has also alarmed investors and triggered leadership uncertainty at the tech company.

The revelations about White’s personal life first emerged during the legal battle last October with Rogan over a $92,000 furniture bill. Later that same month, he stepped down as chief executive following accusations, which White denies, of bullying and intimidation from a former female board director.

And as revealed by the three mastheads last week, White is facing three new claims of inappropriate conduct. Because these new allegations include claims made by WiseTech staff and contractors, the board of WiseTech is also under pressure. Last Thursday, the company entered a trading halt as the board struggled to deal with the fresh crisis. An announcement is expected on Monday morning.

White was to take on an advisory role at the software firm after resigning as chief executive last year.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Assault claims

Among the startling claims raised in White’s unsigned affidavit of May 2022 is the allegation that Nasser assaulted him.

“Nasser struck me very hard two times in the face with an open palm and full arm swing and started to smash items in my house” he said of an argument in May 2022 after he indicated he wanted to return to his former partner of seven years, Christine Kontos.

White shared photos of his bruised face with friends, claiming it was the result of an assault by Nasser.

Richard White, Zena Nasser and her daughter.

White told his lawyers that after the assault, Nasser began to allege that he had sexually abused her, had slapped her daughter from a previous relationship and that Nasser was demanding $50 million for the “gaslighting and abuse” she claimed to have suffered. White strenuously denied her claims and they were not substantiated.

White expressed his hurt and distress “to see such false allegations put into writing”. It was “very taxing on my mental health” and it affected his ability to “concentrate or focus on everyday life”, he said in the May 2022 document.

“I felt as though Ms Nasser was asserting the allegations above to hurt me and to put pressure on me to give in to her will,” the draft affidavit stated.

He said Nasser “would allege certain things without any basis, that were entirely untrue, and had the potential to be very damaging to me professionally and also were hurtful personally”.

But he also said she “could be so sweet and loving and then, seemingly out of nowhere, turn and be very hurtful”.

Given the troubling allegations that White made in his draft affidavit almost three years ago, friends and family say they don’t understand why the billionaire decided to stay with Nasser. One long-time friend said White had become “withdrawn” and “anxious” during the relationship.

White now says he and Nasser are deeply in love, telling friends he would “take a bullet” for her. He has also downplayed the allegations he made in the draft affidavit, saying he was injured playing squash and that the demands for money were exaggerated and not serious.

Relationship ‘not exclusive’

At the time of the financial demands and alleged assault by Nasser in May 2022, White hired lawyer Brendan Wyhoon’s advisory firm Ironbark and private investigator Max Turbett to explore how to extricate himself from the relationship, according to emails and correspondence between White’s advisers.

Turbett, who has since been indicted in California over a $US37 million ($58.2 million) extortion attempt, immediately charged White $20,000 to undertake a technical surveillance countermeasure sweep for spyware.

Advice was also sought from criminal barrister Philip Strickland, SC, regarding Nasser’s demands as well as other potential “frivolous/vexatious” accusations Nasser could make, according to the emails.

In his draft affidavit, White alleges Nasser was threatening to leak allegations about the conduct of a WiseTech board member to the media, as well as the details of a multimillion confidential deed of settlement with a former lover of White’s that Nasser read over in early 2021.

The woman originally sought $100 million and alleged inappropriate conduct, according to documents obtained by this masthead. She is understood to have received a $2 million settlement and to have later withdrawn the allegations. White denied the allegations in a statutory declaration to WiseTech’s board.

White later explained in his draft witness statement in May 2022 that he was not in an exclusive relationship with Nasser and, because of the “instability of our relationship, including our numerous break-ups”, he never introduced Nasser as his “life partner”. Instead, she was introduced “as my property lawyer”.

Nasser had been working for the now-delisted Chinese property developer Boyuan Holdings, when she met White. Six months after their relationship began in 2020, she parted ways with Boyuan, and White employed her part-time on a $400,000 salary for legal advice, especially on property matters.

During this time, Nasser provided legal advice on some of White’s personal matters. She later threatened to leak the confidential settlement with White’s previous lover to the media. “You are a nasty abusive piece of work. I’m circulating that deed now … goodbye,” read the text she sent to White just before midnight on February 20, 2022.

This was not the first bout of acrimony between the pair, who friends say are an unlikely couple. White is an eccentric tech nerd who used to service musical instruments for rock stars, such as AC/DC and the Angels. Nasser is a former criminal lawyer who once had an array of Sydney underworld figures as clients, including Hassan Kalache, drug importer Michael Ibrahim, the brother of Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim, and convicted murderer Bassam Hamzy.

According to White’s draft affidavit, just a few months into their relationship on November 28, 2020, Nasser texted him saying, “You are a compulsive liar and are a narcissistic bastard … you cheat and hurt people to empower yourself.”

Later that same day, Nasser sent another text to White saying: “Please don’t make me resort to something you and I will regret … I will block you and you can block me and our paths will never cross. You will live in your little cockroach-infested hovel in Bexley getting fatter, redder and drunker with illiterate clearness [cleaners] … I will remain the glamorous lawyer in the city…”

White, in his draft affidavit, recounts one of Nasser’s outbursts.

“I guess we are done then… I’m emailing everything to Joe Aston … go f-- your illiterate employee you sick man,” Nasser texted. “I’m going to the police now.“

Just hours after this exchange, according to White’s affidavit, Nasser went to Hurstville police station on March 20, 2021 to apply for an apprehended violence order. She told police she had fears for her safety as she claimed White had assaulted her and her daughter.

Nasser alleged White, during an argument in October 2020, said he would sell her apartment keys “to bikies and I will come in at night and rape you”.

The following month, in a sworn affidavit, Nasser withdrew the allegations. She said she had made the allegations while suffering from a “distorted mental state” which she attributed to a mix of medications she had been taking for complications arising from her $30,000 breast implant surgery, which White had paid for in December 2020.

She also said alcohol had triggered past traumatic life experiences and that she was experiencing paranoia and delusions when she made the accusations.

In withdrawing the allegations, Nasser says in her affidavit that she was triggered by the words “bikie” and “rape”.

Nasser said she accepted that White had actually said: “It’s not as though I would ever sell your keys to bikies or come into the place and rape you in your sleep. I love you and care for you deeply and would never harm you.”

Nasser’s AVO application had also alleged that in December 2020, while at the grand opening of The Waiting Room, a cocktail bar at the Crown casino in Barangaroo Sydney, White had slapped her.

However, Nasser, in her affidavit retracting her previous claims, said White would “never lay a hand on me” and what had actually happened was she had said something to him, and, in jest, he motioned towards her and lightly touched her cheek. Nasser said CCTV footage would show White hugging her immediately after and nobody in attendance saw anything of concern.

“I believe that any description provided to police inconsistent with this account is a direct result of the delusion I was suffering at the time,” Nasser’s affidavit says.

The Herald, The Age and the Financial Review are not suggesting any of the allegations made by White and Nasser against each other are true, only that they had been made.

Despite the AVO application, the pair stayed together.

Nasser retracted claims that White slapped her during the grand opening of cocktail bar The Waiting Room.

When White allegedly tried to break up with Nasser in February 2022, according to the draft statement White made in May that year, Nasser allegedly responded by placing caveats on properties owned by White. These included two apartments in the Eliza luxury tower near Sydney’s Hyde Park and a Palm Beach residence the WiseTech billionaire agreed to buy for $27.5 million, but hadn’t yet settled on.

According to property documents, Nasser placed the caveats as property that was “purchased by Richard John White for Zena Nasser”. Nasser used her company Firefly Asset Managers to put a caveat on the Palm Beach property purportedly because it was in the final stages of being sold.

“I never intended that Ms Nasser have unfettered control or power to deal with Palm Beach,” White’s May 2022 draft statement says. “Firefly is required to settle on the purchase … on 3 June 2022.”

Firefly withdrew its caveat on June 15 and White settled the property in August. Nasser did not remove the caveats from the Eliza apartments until October 5, 2023, a fortnight after their surrogate child was conceived.

Romance rekindled

In May 2022, as White was seeking advice from Ironbark and Strickland on how to extricate himself from his relationship with Nasser, he alleged Nasser demanded $50 million consisting of private school fees in Switzerland for her teenage daughter from an earlier relationship, estimated to be $250,000 per year, the Palm Beach house and two apartments in the luxury Eliza apartment block in Sydney’s CBD, plus a cash component.

“Ms Nasser dictated an offer she wanted me to send her via email with my lawyer in copy. At various stages during her dictation, she took my keyboard away from me to phrase the terms of the offer the way she wanted to. I sent Ms Nasser a without prejudice offer under duress,” White says in the document.

Nasser again threatened to go to the media alleging inappropriate behaviour by White.

Although Nasser had withdrawn the 2021 AVO application, Strickland and White’s advisers were conscious she was threatening to apply for another AVO.

“Any deal with Zena will need to be concluded with legal representatives present to protect Richard from bullying allegations,” White’s advisers said.

“One of the key issues for Max [Turbett] is to ascertain the best way to approach Zena. Given her history, a direct approach carries risk of her alleging harassment stalking,” Wyhoon wrote in a May 6, 2022 email. “So ideally Max can find an appropriate adviser of Zena’s that can be the go between.”

The mediators chosen to represent Nasser were colourful Sydney property developers Joe and Andy Nahas, who had briefly employed former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro as an executive director of their company Coronation Property after he left politics in late 2021.

They declined to answer questions as to how they came to be involved in the matter. Nasser and White also did not answer any questions about these incidents.

It appears the turning point for the rekindling of their relationship was Nasser’s account of what occurred at a meeting at a cafe in Sydney’s CBD in late May or early June supposedly attended by Nasser, Andy Nahas and an associate of Nahas.

White has told friends and associates that some time after the mediation meeting, Nasser had called him in an agitated state.

There is no evidence that anything untoward occurred, and associates of Andy Nahas said his coffee with Nasser was a friendly one. But Nasser’s tearful call was not only the catalyst for the resumption of the pair’s stormy relationship, it also led to White firing Wyhoon and Turbett, and refusing to pay their fees.

According to correspondence between White’s advisors, Turbett was meant to attend the cafe meeting with Nasser and Nahas as White’s representative. However, he failed to turn up and then disappeared.

The 39-year-old former British military veteran has a colourful background. In 2014, a British tribunal heard that Turbett, who had a previous conviction for assault causing actual bodily harm, was “motivated by vindictiveness and a desire for vengeance” when he dobbed in his then girlfriend’s stepfather, a doctor, who had made a bogus medical report for Turbett falsely claiming he had suffered a whiplash injury in a car accident.

Despite Turbett’s “admitted dishonesty”, the doctor was suspended for six months.

Having moved to Australia, in 2018, Turbett operated out of a modest office in Wollongong, south of Sydney, where he claimed his work involved “high value international investigations and debt recovery cases”.

In August 2024, Turbett and others were indicted in the US after being paid by a Chinese national to extract millions of dollars worth of shares and $US37 million from an LA-based former business partner in 2019, according to the US Department of Justice. The case is in the early stages and none of the allegations have been proven. He has pleaded not guilty.

According to the Grand Jury’s indictment, Turbett’s company Oracle Investigations “would provide private investigation and asset recovery services to clients around the world… Turbett typically would receive a percentage of the assets recovered on behalf of his clients”.

Turbett’s investigation business collapsed in January 2024 with debts of more than $4 million including $1.7 million owed to the tax office.

In his statutory report to the corporate regulator, liquidator Gavin Moss says there were $12 million in “unexplained transactions” that he was trying to unravel.

Turbett was not able to be contacted and Wyhoon did not respond to a series of questions.

Just three weeks after Turbett’s no-show, Nasser and White appeared to be back together.

“Richard and I aren’t married, we keep separate residences but usually together most nights, I love it, he says he works I spend, it’s a match made in heaven,” Nasser told wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan on Instagram in June 2022.

It was the arrival of Rogan in White’s already complicated private life that resulted in the recent slew of unfortunate publicity.

Nasser introduced White to Rogan in August 2022 and a month later, White used a front company to secretly buy his new lover Rogan a $13.1 million mansion in Vaucluse. “With this structure we can ensure that no one can trace the property back to me or you. Zena will never know I own this house,” White told Logan, according to filings in her court case.

Linda Rogan and Richard White were embroiled in a Federal Court dispute over $90,000 in furniture bills.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

But Nasser did find out. She immediately demanded Rogan be turfed out and the house was sold at a $2 million loss. Rogan, who was stuck with a bill for the new furniture, sued White.

White’s ongoing relationships continued to cause grief.

Although Rogan’s case was settled out of court, it prompted further revelations about White’s tempestuous private life. Another woman, Caroline Heidemann, filed a claim against White and Nasser last week. Further allegations of inappropriate behaviour, which he denied, were made by women he’d contacted via the business social media networking platform LinkedIn, which led one to dub him “the LinkedIn Lecher”.

He’d also been accused by former director Christine Holman of bullying. WiseTech told investors in November that the law firms had cleared White of serious wrongdoing in preliminary findings on five allegations.

Following the revelations, White stepped down as chief executive in October, but he has stayed on as a consultant earning the same million-dollar salary. He is yet to sign the consultancy agreement with the company. Shares in WiseTech, which provides logistics software for worldwide transport companies, rose more than 60 per cent in 2024, taking its founder’s net worth past $16 billion.

‘More guarded, sceptical’

As more women come forward with allegations of inappropriate conduct against White, the billionaire believes he has been too trusting.

“I was certainly not prepared for the numerous attempts to extract money from me that I have received over the past five years from people from all walks of life (both male and female),” White said earlier this month. “I am now much more guarded, sceptical and prepared to defend myself against spurious claims.”

The concern within White’s inner circle about his relationship with Nasser reached a peak when she became a 50 per cent owner and director of White’s private investment trust last month. Her half ownership was short-lived. On December 10, just five days after this masthead revealed the restructure, the WiseTech billionaire changed the share structure again, diluting Nasser’s shareholding to 1 per cent, according to documents lodged with the corporate regulator.

The investment vehicle owns a range of property and business interests, including anti-money laundering start-up Kyckr, the company that financed the controversial multimillion-dollar property previously owned by Nasser’s ex-husband Mark Merhi, and an entity which owns a newly bought $67 million Gulfstream private jet, which will be delivered in mid 2025.

Meanwhile, friends and family continue to worry about White, given the unpredictable and volatile relationship with Nasser and what they believe are uncharacteristic decisions by him.

“In the past Richard has always been fiercely loyal to his long-term relationships, yet these connections have become severed or distant,” said one source close to the billionaire.

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