Alleged hitman was handpicked as CFMEU health and safety man on Big Build
Muhammed Sayan was working as a union health and safety representative until a fortnight ago, when armed police arrested him over his alleged role in the shooting of gangland boss Robert Issa in October 2023.
Multiple sources, speaking anonymously due to the sensitive nature of the information, confirmed that Sayan was not elected by his fellow workers, as required by law, but parachuted into his CFMEU position after a request to the union.
That February 2024 request came from a company part-owned by members of a Middle Eastern crime gang suspected by police to be linked to Issa's death only months earlier.
Sayan was arrested a fortnight ago and accused of being part of a five-man hit squad that killed Issa in a Craigieburn shopping centre car park.
The details of how Sayan got his union role to maintain site health and safety — and kept it after the union was plunged into administration — come amid separate revelations about how union bosses and ex-bikies culled from the CFMEU have re-emerged as industry fixers or subcontractors to the Allan government's Big Build projects.
They include allegedly corrupt ex-CFMEU assistant secretary Derek Christopher, who has hung up his shingle as an industry 'mediator' through his newly founded firm, Atlas Consulting; ex-union delegate and former Mongols outlaw bikie boss Tyrone Bell, who is now also an industrial relations fixer via a company called Dynamis Health and Safety Relations; and Rebels bikie figure and sacked Big Build CFMEU health and safety representative Joel Leavitt, who is launching a labour-hire company.
Gangland figure Mick Gatto is also still attempting to engage in deal-making with senior union officials.
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