‘The LinkedIn Lecher’: Billionaire’s controversial approaches, board concerns revealed

The board of Australia’s biggest listed technology company, WiseTech Global, will re-examine serious allegations against the firm’s billionaire founder and chief executive, Richard White, by a sexual partner that resulted in a confidential multimillion-dollar payment by White to settle the matter.

The bombshell development follows an emergency weekend board meeting triggered by a series of questions from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, and heaps further pressure on the rich-lister, who was already struggling to contain the fallout from other allegations about his personal life spilling into the public arena.

WiseTech’s Richard White.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The joint investigation by the three mastheads can reveal a woman who had a sexual relationship with Australia’s 11th richest person made several claims about him in late 2020 including allegations he had engaged in inappropriate behaviour.

In a written response to questions, the board said that White had provided the previous board with a statutory declaration denying the allegations but that some directors became aware of the allegations only on Friday.

Following a series of crisis meetings over the weekend, a WiseTech spokeswoman said on Sunday: “The board is making further inquiries and considering this matter further.”

The joint investigation has also uncovered:

• White approached numerous female entrepreneurs via text message and social media with offers of professional support that could shift into crude or suggestive language. The approaches led one woman to dub White “the LinkedIn Lecher”;
• Leaked correspondence between directors that reveals corporate governance concerns over White’s decision to pay former chief growth officer Gail Williamson $2.7 million – double what he was earning as chief executive – without disclosing this to investors; and
• White’s wife, Zena Nasser, applied for and then withdrew an apprehended violence order against White in April 2021.

White has run WiseTech since 1994 and has considerable influence as the company’s founder, chief executive and largest shareholder. The logistics software business floated on the ASX in April 2016 and now has a market capitalisation of $41 billion.

WiseTech’s growth has helped White amass a personal fortune of more than $10 billion.

Salacious details about White’s private life entered the public domain in the past month. The WiseTech founder lodged a bankruptcy notice against another former lover, Sydney wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan, who applied to the Federal Court to have it thrown out.

In court documents, Rogan alleged White expected her to have sex with him in exchange for an investment in her business.

Beauty entrepreneur Linda Rogan arrives at the Federal Court last week. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The WiseTech board, which is chaired by Richard Dammery, has described the Rogan stoush as a “personal matter”. White said on Thursday that he was “fully committed and laser-focused on delivering WiseTech’s strategy”.

Rogan’s legal action has put White’s leadership in the public spotlight because he has so far chosen not to settle the matter. Now, this masthead can reveal that in late 2020, the now 69-year-old tech tycoon decided to take a different course of action.

According to accounts by multiple sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are afraid of legal reprisals, a woman threatened to go to the WiseTech board with damaging allegations about their relationship and White’s use of company funds for her benefit. The woman could not be reached for comment.

White briefed the board about the woman’s allegations and provided a board sub-committee with a statutory declaration that said the allegations were not true. The law firm retained to investigate the allegations, Arnold Bloch Leibler, worked closely with White at the time, according to sources familiar with the matter and not authorised to speak publicly.

Linda Rogan (right) is fighting Richard White in court.Credit: Facebook

Ultimately, company sources said certain directors assessed the claims as an “extortion attempt” from a jilted lover who also supplied electronic products to WiseTech.

“The board [at the time] received assurances from Mr White that the allegations were not founded,” a company spokeswoman said. “The matter was resolved through a settlement to which the company was not party.

“The company has on occasion acquired some goods and services from related parties.”

Asked if he was worried the allegations would affect his position on the board, White responded on Sunday: “Of course, I am concerned about any allegations, even untested allegations.” He added: “I am always concerned to protect WiseTech, the company that I created from scratch and care deeply about.”

This masthead is not suggesting the allegations against White are true, only that they were made.

Legal sources as well as two sources close to White provided more detail about the relationship and its collapse. They said the “on and off” relationship commenced before his marriage to Barbara Mason ended in 2015. They described the seven-year affair as toxic.

One source said the woman was vulnerable and at times suffered from significant mental and financial distress.

The relationship included offers from White of significant financial support, including a house in Lane Cove. White bought the four-bedroom house on Austin Street, Lane Cove, in Sydney’s lower north shore, for $4.18 million in September 2018. Property records show in early 2020, the woman lodged a caveat on the title of the Lane Cove house. Her caveat claims she and White had an “oral agreement” that the house was to be hers.

However, the house sat empty. Meanwhile, White spent almost $7 million building an enormous compound in the Sydney suburb of Bexley where he currently lives. The expansive property has a pool, six townhouses and a basement car park. The Bexley site had once been a wedding venue owned by his family.

By late 2020, sources said White’s relationship with the woman had soured and she had sought a payout in the low hundreds of millions based on the growth of White’s personal wealth during what she claimed was a de facto relationship.

Lawyers acting for the woman and White reached what is believed to be a multimillion-dollar confidential settlement in March 2021. The woman agreed to withdraw the allegations she had made against White as part of the settlement.

Governance concerns

The settlement of the woman’s allegations came at a time when another sensitive matter was being discussed by the WiseTech board.

Leaked board correspondence from 2019 shows White resisted directors’ demands that shareholders be informed that he had made a senior female employee the highest-paid executive in the company. Usually, a listed company lists its highest-paid executives in its annual report. The Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review are not suggesting that WiseTech breached any corporate governance rules, only that the board expressed concern.

Gail Williamson, who was WiseTech’s chief growth officer from 2017-20, was paid $2 million in cash and equity in 2018, according to confidential documents. The following year, White upped her remuneration to $2.7 million in cash and equity.

Richard White and Gail Williamson.Credit: Twitter

Some directors expressed concern that Williamson’s pay was not appropriate for her role and that it should be disclosed in the annual report given the size of her remuneration. One director noted the issue “has the capacity to seriously harm the company and its shareholders on numerous fronts”, according to the correspondence.

According to company sources speaking anonymously because they were not authorised to comment, White rebuffed the concerns of some board members about the board’s lack of oversight over executives’ salaries.

Another director said they found it hard to believe the process of approving the salary was “fair and reasonable” or that it had “proper board oversight”. A third director noted the company’s history and “unique culture” but that WiseTech needed to be more “thoughtful and explicit” as a public company.

Williamson did not respond to questions. A spokeswoman for White said there was nothing inappropriate about how much Williamson had been paid.

“My interactions with Ms Williamson have always only been business-related,” he said. “I first met Gail in her job interview. Since that time, I have only had work-related interactions with her. Since her departure, I have spoken to Ms Williamson rarely.”

The board said in its weekend statement that it retained its remuneration responsibility at all times.

WiseTech founder Richard White with wife Zena Nasser.Credit: Facebook

This masthead is not suggesting that Williamson was not deserving of her remuneration or that she was not appropriately qualified for the role only that there was a concern about disclosure.

White’s marriage

In April 2021, Sutherland Local Court heard that NSW police were applying for an apprehended violence order against White. The woman seeking protection from White was his then-partner and now wife, Zena Nasser. Two months later, Nasser withdrew her AVO application via a sworn affidavit.

A company spokeswoman said White had made the board aware of the AVO application only on Sunday morning.

Neither Nasser nor White responded to questions about the AVO. Instead, a response was received from a source, speaking anonymously because the matter was sensitive, who said: “Zena was at the time in a distorted mental state and suffering a paranoid episode.”

Nasser and White continued their relationship and married in July in Austin, Texas. They recently welcomed their first child through surrogacy.

Nasser, 45, is a former criminal lawyer who described the relationship as a “match made in heaven”, according to messages on Instagram between Nasser and Rogan filed as part of the Federal Court action. As White would say, “he works, I spend”, Nasser told Rogan.

Rogan said she was first approached by Nasser in mid-June 2022 via Instagram. Nasser private-messaged her saying she was “sooo hot” and that she just had to “message this stunning lady x”.

Nasser later urged Rogan to come to Dubai where “I have an apartment” or to Geneva where Nasser said she was looking to buy.

“I am so over Sydney,” Nasser messaged.

In August 2022, Nasser organised for Rogan to join her and White for dinner. She messaged: “Richard doesn’t do well with men [smiley face emoji] he’s a little Apsperger’s.”

After the trio had dinner at Bambini Trust, a Sydney institution popular with the business and legal community, the three went to White’s penthouse in the nearby Eliza apartment block overlooking Hyde Park.

In the days after the dinner, the two women continued to chat, with Nasser saying that White was helpful and smart, and that Rogan should “take whatever you can of his knowledge it’s priceless ... And ps I don’t get jealous … he knows that”.

Rogan alleges, in court documents, that by September 2022, her relationship with White became sexual and they were house hunting. After viewing a number of properties, the pair settled on a mansion in Vaucluse, a wealthy suburb in Sydney’s east, which White would buy for Rogan to live in.

On September 29, 2022, using the pseudonym “Rick LeBlanc”, White logged on to watch his lawyer successfully bid $13.1 million for the house.

According to Rogan’s claim, White told her she would have to pay market rent because “with my wealth, I get scrutinised”. But he told her not to worry about the rent because she would receive an annual salary of $1 million a year from her new company, Bionik Wellness, which he would help fund.

According to her affidavit, only days before the auction Rogan was introduced to two women at White’s Bexley compound. He explained that they would be the directors of a company, Maravillosa, (Spanish for marvellous) which would own the house.

Rogan’s affidavit alleges that White said this was to ensure “that no one can trace the property back to me or you. Zena will never know I own this house.”

But Nasser did find out. Corporate records indicate that on November 14, 2022, only three weeks after the sale was finalised, Nasser became the sole director of Maravillosa.

The following day, Rogan was turfed out of the house and stuck with a $90,000 bill for the furniture she had bought for her new abode.

Just two days later, White attended a corporate event in Sydney where he showed women photos from his days in a rock band and handed out his business card, according to two people at the function.

“It was to impress and convince me of his value which felt very weird,” one woman said on the condition of anonymity.

The Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review have spoken with four woman who say they were approached by White saying he wanted to help build their careers. Some of the women said White was preoccupied with behavioural science which he believed was the key to understanding business success.

Three of the women, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he would provide women with his recommended reading list which included Aubrey Daniel’s Bringing out the Best in People; Daniel Kaheman’s Thinking Fast and Slow; and Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.

One woman, who was provided a list of books after White had contacted her on LinkedIn, said the tech guru offered to “help” expand her wellness business (the woman is not Rogan). He invited her to business meetings at his Hawkesbury retreat and at his house in Bexley.

The first few meetings were strictly business and sometimes with members of his WiseTech team present. On a subsequent visit to his Bexley house, she found herself alone and they had sex.

The woman was upset at this development and her dealings with White ended. Describing him as “the LinkedIn Lecher”, she said he was using his “wealth, fame and business status” in an attempt to attract women.

A series of texts with another woman reveal White made crude double entendres, which she appears to laugh off or ignore. When he makes the comment again and claims to be reeling it back, she outlines she is ignoring it.

The conversation later shows he makes another suggestive comment, which she rebuffs. Months later, the woman was contacted by Nasser and told that she was not to contact White.

“I regret my past association with Richard,” she told this masthead.

“At times, I felt uncomfortable with how he would speak to me. As a woman in tech, I hope decision-makers in leadership and event planning consider the consequences of inviting him, as his presence could put women on guard. He offered no useful or original business advice in my experience, and the possible benefits are not worth it.”

According to another woman who says White contacted her on LinkedIn in mid-2023, White’s comments became too familiar. She said she had seen this pattern before with other men she had dealt with, where the potential support was a guise for their real intentions, so she cut off the conversation.

“I thought it was odd that Richard sent a personal message on LinkedIn because I do not know him. I thought he may be interested in investing due to his role on the Tech Council board and their mission to support more women in tech,” she said.

“It was odd he sent me that message because he then said he doesn’t have time to invest in start-ups and look after a portfolio of investments. So why send me the message?”

White said he was unaware of any women who had been made to feel uncomfortable about his comments on LinkedIn.

“My LinkedIn account and profile have been accessed and used by my EA and the WiseTech recruitment team to identify talent with IT and management skills as part of the company’s ‘passive recruitment’ program,” he said.

“Using my LinkedIn profile is effective for our recruitment team to engage with potential WiseTech job candidates. At various stages, numerous LinkedIn members (male and female) have been invited to connect because they have the requisite skills and experience to fill a job vacancy. The vast majority of LinkedIn connections come from inbound requests which I accept, for the same recruitment reasons mentioned above.”

Another woman, Jenna Riches, told The Australian that she had approached White via LinkedIn last December and was surprised when he responded.

She said that when they first met in February, “he greeted me with a bunch of flowers, and I looked inside and there was a sex toy in them”.

“He sent me a link around being sapiosexual, which is (about) sexual attraction with intelligent people,” she said.

Riches said that in August, she received a message from Nasser telling her to “leave my husband alone and stop contacting him”.

Women working at WiseTech have differing views about White. A former junior employee, who worked closely with the CEO, described him as awkward but never inappropriate. Another senior company female insider labelled him eccentric but brilliant and warned he might have been a target of opportunistic women and that the current scrutiny was driven by internal company politics.

White’s legal battle with Rogan over the $90,000 furniture bill is due to return to court in February. Some sources close to White have suggested he might attempt to settle the matter.

Meanwhile, the Dalley Avenue house which White told Rogan would be her “forever home” was sold six months after purchase for a $1.6 million loss. Caveats on the house indicate it was bought by the new purchaser with the proceeds of crime. With its purchaser awaiting sentencing for drug supply, the ill-fated love nest will be auctioned at the end of the month.

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