A senior manager of bikie-linked security company MA Services Group has been charged with threatening the safety of investigative journalist Nick McKenzie following a call allegedly made to his home on Christmas Eve.
Victoria Police said a 31-year-old man from Melbourne’s north-west was charged with two counts of using a carriage service to menace/cause offence by detectives from Taskforce Hawk, the special unit set up to investigate crime and corruption linked to the construction industry.
Journalist Nick McKenzie.Credit: Sam Mooy
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have published a series of stories detailing the alleged links of MA Services Group to a bikie club, its subcontractors being accused of tax evasion and worker exploitation, and a sexual harassment scandal involving its founder, Micky Ahuja.
McKenzie is a multi-award winning journalist who works for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes.
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MA Services Group has a series of lucrative but controversial contracts guarding immigration detainees on the Pacific Island of Nauru, and for a number of Commonwealth government agencies, including Australia’s peak criminal intelligence agency.
A search warrant was executed at a residential address in the suburb of Fraser Rise about 7am on Wednesday, where a 31-year-old man was arrested, interviewed and charged by police.
“Investigators will allege he made a threatening phone call to a journalist on the morning of 24 December,” a Victoria Police spokesperson said.
The man was MA Services Group’s national business development manager.