WiseTech billionaire parties in Dubai with man who fled the country

WiseTech Global’s billionaire founding chief executive and his wife have partied in Dubai with a businessman who fled Australia after his real estate firm collapsed owing $80 million almost a decade ago.

In a video uploaded to social media platform TikTok, Richard White and Zena Nasser are seen celebrating with Mark Merhi, 50, in Dubai. Nasser was once married to Merhi, a suspect in arson attacks in the mid-2000s. He was never charged over the attacks.

Nasser married White, who founded WiseTech and built it into an ASX-listed giant worth more than $40 billion, in July.

The video posted on TikTok appears to show Richard White and his wife Zena Nasser celebrating with Mark (second from right) and Khalil Merhi (far right).

The video was posted by a person with a grievance against Merhi, taking issue with the celebration while buyers of apartments in his development are left with “a tonne of debt, defects in all of there [sic] buildings”.

In 2020, NSW building officials called Merhis Corp’s 16-storey tower at 93 Auburn Road in western Sydney’s Auburn “an abomination”, describing it as a development that ticked “about every box” in failing to meet critical benchmarks in fire safety, structure, waterproofing and building enclosures.

White and Nasser appear in the video posted on TikTok earlier this week. It is unclear exactly when the video was filmed.

The account was deactivated hours after this article was published by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.

White, Nasser, Merhi and his brother Khalil can be seen breaking plates at what looks like a family celebration. White and Nasser are currently in Dubai, where the billionaire owns a $3.7 million waterfront villa. He is due to return to Australia next week in his recently acquired Gulfstream jet for which White paid $67 million.

Nasser previously told The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review that she “was in a relationship with Mr Merhi for less than 18 months and they went their separate ways in 2011 the same year their daughter was born. Mr Merhi and Zena share a daughter and Zena has been the sole carer and a single mother since 2011.”

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.

In November, the Financial Review, the Herald and the Age reported that White’s private company was bankrolling a major property development in Sydney’s west, which had been recommended by Merhi. Merhi previously owned one of the properties and sold it to an associate.

In September 2020, as Merhi’s company was collapsing, he agreed to sell the industrial site to Ahmad Ahmad, who runs a coffee and nut roasting business in Lakemba, at a price so low that liquidators would later tell creditors the sale may have been an “uncommercial transaction”.

Three years later, White lent millions of dollars to Ahmad to develop the site and other property, according to land title documents.

White said in November: “Mark Merhi ... introduced the refinancing deal to me … I am aware that Mark Merhi knows Ahmad. It was through that introduction that the refinancing arrangement ... was organised.”

White’s personal life was thrust into the spotlight last year after he sued a former lover, Sydney wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan, over a $90,000 bill for furniture that was to have been for a Vaucluse mansion he purchased for her. That lawsuit led to several revelations about how White had used his fortune and influence as a businessman in his personal life.

White subsequently resigned as WiseTech’s chief executive after he was accused of bullying, allegations he denied. An investigation by Seyfarth Shaw, which was engaged by WiseTech, found “there has not been repeated unreasonable behaviour, or behaviour that could be characterised as ‘bullying’ or ‘intimidatory’ or otherwise unlawful”.

But it concluded that White had a “direct approach” which was “consistent with the process of ‘creative abrasion’” at the company.

He has since been appointed to a new role titled founding chief executive which keeps him on his previous $1 million salary.

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