Micky Ahuja could be charming, but women who worked for him or were in his circle are now calling him a predator. Note: this article contains details of alleged sexual assault.
When Sara discovered the bedsheets covered in blood, her training as a police officer immediately kicked in. Crime scenes need to be documented, so Sara reached for her phone and snapped pictures of the bloody sheets and vomit.
Next, she made contemporaneous disclosure of what had happened, one of two such records of the grave crime allegedly committed in a hotel suite at Melbourne’s Crown casino in April 2019.
Sara*, though, was no longer a police officer, having left the force two years earlier. And it wasn’t a stranger’s ordeal she was meticulously documenting.
She had woken up at the scene. Sara was the alleged victim.
And the accused rapist was her boss, Micky Ahuja, a powerful and wealthy businessman in the midst of building an empire in Australia’s private security industry by winning the trust of the nation’s biggest companies, AFL clubs and sporting events.
“I woke up in a panic and I was alone in the room. I was naked and there was a vomit to the side of the bed and then the bottom half the bed and a little part of myself was covered in blood,” she says. “I knew as soon as I woke up, I knew what had happened to me. I could feel what had happened to me.”
For seven years, Sara stayed mostly silent, apart from working with one of those she had first told about the alleged rape, her psychologist, to process the trauma. All the while, she watched on as Ahuja took the security world by storm, winning over Coles, Kmart and Bunnings as key clients.
Ahuja’s firm MA Services became a sponsor of multiple AFL clubs as his guards worked at the biggest sporting and cultural events in the country, including the Melbourne Cup.
Federal government agencies, including the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the National Anti-Corruption Commission hired Ahuja’s guards, as did multiple federal and state agencies across the nation. Universities and prestigious private schools did too.
For Sara, the wealthier and better-connected Ahuja became, the more remote the prospect became of publicly calling him out. She did not know it, but Sara was far from alone.
As Ahuja’s empire expanded rapidly, so had the list of his alleged victims. After an eight-month investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes — the sheer scale of Ahuja’s perfidy was finally revealed.
The now disgraced business leader is at the centre of a scandal without precedent in Australia’s private security industry.
Ahuja declined multiple interview requests but has denied any wrongdoing.
He has fled to Dubai, accused of exploiting thousands of his own workers, mostly vulnerable foreigners, and a multi-agency law enforcement and regulatory taskforce is pursuing him as the key player in a syndicate that has allegedly stolen more than $100 million in unpaid tax and wages and engaged in criminal “phoenix” behaviour.
His firm’s secret dealings with a bikie gang in order to secure a massive offshore contract indirectly bankrolled by the Australian government have been exposed and the scandal has engulfed some of his major customers, led by Coles, which a regulator accused of complicity in the MA syndicate’s “comprehensive abuse of Australia’s industrial relations system and taxation system”.
Yet it wasn’t MA’s suspected mass worker exploitation, bikie gang links, tax evasion, or complicity of some of his clients – all exposed by this masthead’s ongoing investigation – that prompted the firm’s sudden collapse in late December.
Those revelations contributed to the firm’s Christmas Eve implosion, but it was public scrutiny of Ahuja’s treatment of women that forced his customers such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix, Geelong Grammar and property giant CBRE to move to cut ties to the firm.
What Sara didn’t know is there were other alleged victims of sexual predatory behaviour by him. And they, like her, were slowly gathering the courage to speak up.
Despite the breadth and scale of the suspected wrongdoing, the start of the end for MA Services began with one woman saying “enough”.
It wasn’t Sara, but another woman who, like her, thought she would be safe in what was known inside the company as the MA family— the circle of employees and their partners whom Ahuja initially showered with attention.
“Ahuja presents a very slick public image as an entrepreneur, a guy involved in charity, very charismatic,” recalls Rachael*, who didn’t work at MA but whose husband was one of Ahuja’s right-hand men.
Asked what she thinks of Ahuja today, she offers just a short description: “He’s a predator.”
Rachael and her husband became part of the MA family after he helped secure the firm’s biggest contract in 2021: a $50 million-a-year security services deal with Coles.
Ahuja incentivised her husband to win over the supermarket giant by telling him “he would be gifted a convertible car” if he could secure Coles as a customer.
She says her husband “worked really hard to get that contract” and remembers the day it was won, because a yellow Mustang appeared in her driveway.
“That night the car was dropped off to our doorstep,” she says.
The deal with Coles was like the new car: shiny on the outside but with strings attached.
Rachael recalls her husband telling her MA had secured the Coles deal by “undercutting everybody else”.
“They were underpaying other staff members to be able to make their costs lower,” she says.
What Rachael describes as “pillow talk” could be dismissed as idle chatter, but belied an ugly truth.
On Sunday, this masthead revealed how Operation Hermes – a multi-agency law enforcement and regulatory probe into what is known as the “MA syndicate” — is probing tax evasion involving MA Services and a series of related companies that employed thousands of mostly foreign workers.
The MA syndicate is alleged to have operated between 2015 and late last year, pocketing unpaid tax and worker entitlements of more than $100 million.
According to Operation Hermes’ confidential assessments, the syndicate is suspected of running a large-scale and highly organised criminal “phoenix” operation involving a network of front companies with dummy directors which would collapse or disappear when tax debts or worker entitlements are due or demanded, only to resurface under new names.
Internal MA records reveal some of the entities in the syndicate are the same firms used by Ahuja to supply guards to Coles.
Labour Licensing Commissioner Steve Dargavel, whose agency, the Victorian Labour Hire Authority, is working with the Tax Office, police and the Fair Work Ombudsman on Operation Hermes, has also claimed Coles must have known MA was rotten and the workers guarding its stores would be exploited.
“What we now know is that there were thousands of workers who had their wages stolen,” Dargavelsays. “Coles … had enough information to know that workers could not be paid properly under the contracts that they entered into” with MA Services, he says.
Coles refused an interview but said in a statement it strongly disputed Dargavel’s claim while accepting MA Services was engaged in serious wrongdoing.
Rachael says that as long as Ahuja and his managers were making money and buying fast cars care of contracts with Coles and other large firms, no one at MA cared about Ahuja’s rorting of guards.
Her husband’s gifts— a Mustang and a Range Rover— paled into comparison with Ahuja’s car collection.
When administrators began searching for missing company assets in January, they discovered Ahuja had not only funnelled millions of dollars he owed the Tax Office and workers into bank accounts and related companies, but had bought about a dozen properties and a car collection that included a Rolls-Royce 4WD, two Mercedes G-Wagons and a Lamborghini.
It was only after her husband had an affair and left Rachael that she discovered just how predatory Ahuja was.
Rachael suspected Ahuja was hiding a large chunk of her estranged husband’s salary so he could minimise his tax and child support obligations.
Rachael’s ex-husband did not respond when contacted for comment, but this masthead has confirmed a firm registered in his new girlfriend’s name has received regular “consulting” and other payments from Ahuja, including almost $200,000 last financial year.
As a newly single mother in financial distress, Rachael asked Ahuja to come clean about the consulting payments. His response shocked her.
“He called me and he … basically word for word, he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to [f—] you’, and said, ‘I’m prepared to offer you X amount of dollars for you to do X, Y, and Z.’ It was explicit what he wanted me to do and I was just like, wow, it just threw me 100 per cent.”
Rachael refused but Ahuja bombarded her with sleazy disappearing messages on Snapchat, telling her if she needed money, he would pay her but only if he had sex with her.
One message stated: “Want to make love, kiss those lips. Let’s make a deal? $1000 for every time we catch up.”
Another said: “Happy to pay. Asked a zillion times already.”
A third message said: “It’s high time now. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
Rachael says she felt “like I was a piece of meat, like I was a commodity, something that could be bought.”
Unlike others in the MA family chasing a piece of Ahuja’s wealth, she also held to a simple truth: “I can’t be bought.”
She photographed the messages. When the story of MA’s suspected rampant worker exploitation, tax evasion and bikie links first broke in this masthead in October – with Ahuja denying all wrongdoing – Rachael contacted one of the reporters and provided the messages.
A few days later, when this masthead reported them, Ahuja stood down as CEO, hoping to prevent MA customers leaving.
Coles was not one of them, although it had begun an “internal investigation”, but other large corporations and the Victorian government moved more swiftly to sever ties with MA.
Rachael hadn’t acted only to expose her own sexual harassment, as part of the MA family – she knew of other complaints. As disgusting as Ahuja’s behaviour had been, she considered herself one of the lucky ones.
“I know of other things that he’s done to other women,” she says. Ahuja was not just a sex harasser, says Rachael. The man who had won Australian young entrepreneur of the year was also an accused rapist.
A few days after her life-changing ordeal, Sara told her psychologist what she had endured at Ahuja’s hands.
The self-described naive country girl had joined MA after leaving the police force aged 30 in late 2017 and, initially, Ahuja impressed her.
He was 29 and, after arriving in Melbourne from India, had transformed himself from a dishwasher and security guard to the owner of multiple companies, including the fastest-growing security firm in the nation.
“He was charismatic. He’s sort of a showman. I couldn’t believe that he was so approachable being, you know, the head of the company, the boss, the owner.”
After Ahuja asked Sara to help him win clients, she joined an utterly foreign world of corporate networking.
As another company insider explains: “Micky is the Australian Wolf of Wall Street.”
Sara says it was all “client dinners, long boozy lunches that turn into long, boozy dinners and I thought, not being around that before, this is how these people network”.
Crown’s high roller rooms functioned as a second office for Ahuja and his business partner, a man called Rao Nabeel Roshnan (who, along with Ahuja, is now a key target of the multi-agency law enforcement and regulatory probe Operation Hermes).
“The money that was going through those tables was obscene,” Sara says. “One night I had a drink and grabbed what I thought was a coaster to put my drink on and they all freaked out … they’re like, ‘That’s not a coaster. That’s a $100,000 chip.’”
The divide between Ahuja and the security guards he employed could not have been starker. As he lived it up at Crown, Sara says, she was getting phone calls from distressed security guards who had not been paid in weeks or months.
Sara fielded complaints from workers who “can’t feed their babies or they ran out of formula and they’ve got no money or their wives are crying because they can’t put food on the table.
“I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t paying, when we’re sitting in this room and I’m watching them put hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of chips down a hole.”
She says many guards were not only badly underpaid in cash but forced to work long hours, often in breach of their student visa working limit conditions.
“They would drive from job to job, sleep in the car. It was near on inhumane because it wasn’t just a guard here or there, it was their workforce as a whole.”
Sara would ferry basic supplies, such as food and nappies, to the most desperate workers, while fielding demands from Ahuja to wine and dine clients. It was distressing. Still, Sara had no idea just how dangerous Ahuja could be.
This she discovered after an especially boozy dinner and drinks evening Ahuja had arranged for his favoured managers. Sara recalls becoming very drunk, “to the point where I was passing out in my chair”, when Ahuja volunteered to take to her hotel.
“I’ll make sure she gets home safe,” she says Ahuja told their companions.
Sara vaguely remembers the taxi ride to her hotel before Ahuja took her up to her room.
“It’s only flashes and I’m thankful for it being like that.”
She remembers Ahuja “trying to help me sit or help me lay down” and being “super embarrassed” as she passed out with her clothes on.
The next thing, she woke up in “a panic” and alone in the room.
“I was naked and there was a vomit to the side of the bed and then the bottom half the bed and a little part of myself was covered in blood.”
The blood was from tearing Sara had suffered during the alleged rape. After calling her housemate and detailing what had happened, she went home.
“I had a bleach bath … because I just felt so dirty and like violated and disgusting.”
As a former police officer – and knowing the criminal justice system process that would follow – Sara couldn’t bring herself to report what had happened.
She told her psychologist and tried to put it behind her, even returning to work at MA for six months.
Ahuja pretended as if nothing had happened. Sara could not forget it and quit MA in late 2019. Even then, she could not shake off the ordeal. In 2020, she confronted Ahuja in a message after seeing a news story about MA.
“Next time you rape someone – you might not be so lucky,” she wrote. “The only reason I never went to the cops that night after crown is because I had enough on my plate.”
In November, after this masthead revealed the sex-for-money demands Ahuja made of Rachael, Sara decided to publicly tell her story.
Leaked MA files and correspondence reveal others who worked for Ahuja, both at MA and his other businesses, have also raised complaints.
Many found their way to MA health and safety manager Tim Jones, who prior to joining Ahuja, was a bikie gang member.
In a recent message to an associate, Jones wrote that it “suxs to be Micky” and that he knew of “seven women that I know that [have] come forward in the business in regards to sexual misconduct as well as the nine managers that have come forward in regards to bullying harassment”.
Among the cases raised within MA is a second allegation of rape.
Jones’ bikie past made him a curious choice as Ahuja’s health, safety and compliance manager. It was Jones who, in late 2024, suggested MA’s controversial partnership with a small security firm controlled by the Finks outlaw motorcycle gang including its successful pitch for an Albanese government-bankrolled Nauru contract.
The Nauru deal was, at least briefly, a coup for the Finks (it came unstuck after this masthead revealed the bikie involvement) Jones was less successful pushing the gang’s security firm into MA’s Australian operations.
He was blocked by yet another brave woman on the MA payroll.
One NSW manager, Hela Mejri, was ostracised when she refused to put the Finks firm on the MA subcontractor payroll. Things got worse when she raised concerns about Ahuja’s underpayment of migrant cleaners.
When Mejri took stress leave, Ahuja dispatched Jones and two other burly MA managers to her family home to collect her work car and laptop. She wasn’t home, but her children were.
She remembers her terror at learning her two young children were confronted by the MA trio.
“You are not dealing with the normal corporate company. You are dealing with, like, some gangsters coming to actually put me under threat. They wanted me to feel that. They wanted to threaten me and threaten my kids,” says Mejri.
Jones declined repeated requests to be interviewed. Mejri ultimately blames his boss, Ahuja.
“Micky will be the sweetest person when you first meet him. He will introduce himself as kind, charismatic. But the minute that he will find that you are trying to question how he runs his business, he will become a monster,” she says.
Ahuja also left a trail of distressed employees in his side-hustle businesses. This masthead has obtained multiple complaints from female staff at a cafe Ahuja previously owned.
One waitress alleged that in her second day at work Ahuja “pulled me close to him and tried to kiss me”. Another worker describes how “Micky Ahuja … started to harass me” with “sleazy behaviour”. A third described “inappropriate and unwelcome comments” along with “inappropriate and sleazy behaviour”.
Two complainants have also contacted this masthead alleging Ahuja sexually harassed or preyed on women outside of businesses he owned, including a woman he met at Crown casino.
The prospect of Ahuja facing justice for his alleged misdeeds from his new home in Dubai are unclear.
Briefing notes reveal the ATO has confidentially assessed that the MA syndicate for years breached Australia’s immigration, corporate and employment laws to allow Ahuja and other members to get rich.
Ahuja remains a wealthy man. In January, administrators said that along with trying to recover a massive tax debt and repay workers, they were also pursuing $13 million in suspicious company loans, including at least $4.8 million that ended up in Ahuja’s personal accounts. Many more millions are still missing.
Sara says she has waited a long time for Ahuja’s conduct to catch up with him.
She hopes that by telling her story, she will save other women and workers from the man who wanted so badly to become an Australian business titan and did not care who he hurt along the way.
“A man that has built his pedestal on lies, deceit, rape, like every evil and terrible quality … he needs that pedestal taken away,” she says.
“I want the whole world to know who he is because then they won’t be in the position I’m in.”
*Names have been changed.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
