{"id":382871,"date":"2025-12-31T15:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/382871\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T15:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:57:10","slug":"ma-services-group-senior-manager-charged-over-threats-to-age-journalist-nick-mckenzie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/382871\/","title":{"rendered":"MA Services Group senior manager charged over threats to Age journalist Nick McKenzie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

Victoria Police said a 31-year-old man from Melbourne\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Journalist<\/p>\n

Journalist Nick McKenzie.Credit: Sam Mooy<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

McKenzie is a multi-award winning journalist who works for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

MA Services Group has a series of lucrative but controversial contracts guarding immigration detainees on the Pacific Island of Nauru,<\/a> and for a number of Commonwealth government agencies, including Australia\u2019s peak criminal intelligence agency.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestigators will allege he made a threatening phone call to a journalist on the morning of 24 December,\u201d a Victoria Police spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The man was MA Services Group\u2019s national business development manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior manager of bikie-linked security company MA Services Group has been charged with threatening the safety of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-382871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}