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. Loading 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 Fair.