The Dubai connection that laid the seeds for a $1b superannuation disaster

The Age

2 days ago

In early 2022, financial planner Ferras Merhi walked into a mosque to seal a deal that would change his life and those of thousands of Australians.
Merhi, a 196-centimetre, former top-grade footballer and the boss of financial planning group Venture Egg, soon locked onto who he was there to meet.
There, with a broad smile, was Rashid Alshakshir, a cafe owner and social media expert with colourful connections, and the former business partner of notorious Comanchero bikie and suspected double murderer Hasan Topal.
The pair were meeting for the first time on the instruction of a mutual contact in the United Arab Emirates who was working with two unknown Australian clients looking to drum up business for two struggling fund managers, First Guardian Master Fund 's David Anderson and Shield Master Fund 's Paul Chiodo.
Together Merhi and Alshakshir would create a money-making machine that used a marketing campaign built on social media ads and call centres to lure 12,000 people from around Australia into switching $1 billion worth of super into the two funds.
Many of those customers would pass through Merhi's various financial services businesses, Venture Egg and Financial Services Group Australia.
Along the way, Alshakshir, Merhi and football buddy and business partner Osama 'Sammy' Saad earned $100 million in allegedly illegal commissions.
A portion of that money would flow back to companies in Dubai overseen by Ishak Hassan, cryptocurrency spruiker and dabbler in falconry.
Within two years, First Guardian and Shield had collapsed, and the corporate watchdog had launched a major probe amid concerns that vast amounts of the money invested by superannuation savers had been squandered on Chiodo and Anderson's pet projects, lavish lifestyles, luxury real estate and on those huge fees for the marketing campaign.
The regulator has since described the marketing campaign as 'industrial-scale misconduct'.
Liquidators are picking through the wreckage of each group and have found many investments made by Anderson and Chiodo 'have no value'. Returns for investors, particularly in the First Guardian business, are expected to be as low as 20¢ in the dollar.
Alshakshir outlined the mosque meeting, the instructions from Dubai and Hassan's involvement in the scheme in written answers provided to ASIC as part of its probe.
Those answers form part of the 12,000 pages of documents filed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in the Federal Court as part of its investigations into the two funds and the marketing campaign. Just over half that trove was released to this masthead.
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ASIC compiled the dossier when it successfully convinced a judge to take the serious step of freezing the assets of all five men and banning them from leaving the country.
The regulator has not yet launched substantive court proceedings against any of the players, and may not, but to win the orders, which are regarded as draconian, it had to show it would have a good case.
Those who are the subject of applications of freezing orders are usually not told of the application, meaning they have not had the chance to test the evidence put forward by ASIC.
The cache of information includes company documents outlining the super scheme and their marketing campaigns, business ledgers showing the commission payments, emails, transcripts of calls with customers and invoices billing the fund managers on behalf of Hassan and detailed responses provided by Chiodo to the regulator.
ASIC has used these documents to allege in court that it is investigating Anderson and Chiodo – the men who ran the failed funds – and Merhi, Saad and Alshakshir – who funnelled their clients into the funds – for a litany of criminal offences and civil breaches, including fraud.
There is no suggestion that Merhi, Saad and Alshakshir had knowledge of the funds' investments or any misuse of their clients' money. They did not have access to client funds or make decisions about the funds' investments. Instead, the allegations against them relate to excessive commissions.
(Chiodo's legal team recently told the Federal Court he was facing the real prospect of being criminally charged, though he denied to this masthead he was under investigation for any criminal offences.)
This masthead is not suggesting any substantive case brought by ASIC would be successful, just that it has successfully obtained orders as part of ASIC's long-running and ongoing investigation into the men.
For their part, the men involved deny any wrongdoing.
Chiodo has long said he has been unfairly targeted by ASIC, and the payments made by his fund were not for illegal commissions but for marketing services, a practice he says is common in the industry.
Merhi and Saad – who this masthead captured high-fiving during a game of Friday night football this month when Merhi was named best on ground – have also denied any wrongdoing.
The pair both insist they received no 'commissions', describing the payments as marketing fees and insisting that their planning groups recommended the two funds because they were approved by Macquarie and other high-standard investment groups.
Meanwhile, Anderson – who was spotted in April decamping from his home in Melbourne's affluent Hawthorn, overlooking the Yarra, to his parents' home around the corner – has not responded to requests for comment but has denied the allegations in court, saying ASIC has misunderstood his business and that its suspicions of mismanagement are unfounded.
For his part, Alshakshir told this masthead that he only has to answer to ASIC.
That day in early 2022 at the mosque, Alshakshir was ready to put the past behind him after the sad end of his gym business with Topal after the bikie's elevation to national president of the feared gang in 2017.
He had recently completed a course known as The Mastermind that helps people turbocharge their business. In the case of Alshakshir, that involved learning how to build a social media presence via targeted ads and arrangements with call centres to process customers.
His sister, Sumaiah Alshakshir, who was sentenced in NSW to a two-year community corrections order for fraud and conspiracy to defraud over her role in an NDIS swindle in 2021, would become the general manager of Merhi's Venture Egg financial planning business and the operations manager of Alshakshir's marketing group, Bespoke.
Merhi brought two aces to the new friends' arrangement.
The first was his relationship with Anderson, who had worked with Merhi's Venture Egg business for about a year.
The other was Chiodo, who has previously told this masthead that he met Merhi through Anderson.
Merhi knew both men through his role as a financial planner and both had approached him for help growing their super funds.
Chiodo and Anderson's ventures had a joint problem – Anderson had invested $95 million into Chiodo's property fund, which was in serious financial strife.
To save the fund and release the money back to Anderson's fund, they needed a lot of money quickly, board minutes of Anderson's business indicate – a reading supported by three people briefed on the matter who declined to be named for this story.
With the assistance of Merhi and his new connection Alshakshir, that would soon be possible.
Together, Merhi and Alshakshir would help build a campaign of advertisements that would encourage people to 'find your lost super', undertake a 'super health check' or consolidate multiple accounts.
Alshakshir would later explain to investigators that once people had clicked on the ads and filled out a brief form about their super, a call centre operative would contact them with a sales pitch.
It sometimes included telling customers that their industry super fund was under-performing and warning that the customer would lose money.
As one transcript of a call set out: 'Are you aware that ASIC are preparing to sue AustralianSuper? Not many people know about it. They have done a good job of keeping it quiet … ultimately the members will pay for that. So that will come through all of the member accounts.'
Then the call centre operator would dial in a financial planner sourced from Merhi and Saad's network of groups.
Those planners would in turn recommend Anderson and Chiodo's investment vehicles. It is these recommendations and the resulting fees that are at the heart of ASIC's investigation into whether Merhi and Saad breached their obligations as financial planners.
If the customer agreed to switch their super to either fund, Chiodo and Anderson would pay a fee to the scheme promoters.
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Alshakshir told the regulator those marketing fees would then flow to Hassan's companies, including Heinrich Wolff (HR) 'as part of an agreement'.
Alshakshir provided the regulator with invoices sent to Chiodo for $35 million in marketing fees in 18 months – all were marked on behalf of Hassan's company.
Alshakshir explained the fees were for 'services such as the construction, planning and execution of marketing, promotional and/or advertising campaigns designed by HR and invoicing of HR's clients in Australia'. While ASIC has included its concerns about the payments to the Hassan companies in its court action relating to the funds, it has not taken any action against him.
The Dubai-inspired marketing strategy worked a treat.
In October 2022, Alshakshir emailed Chiodo to say: 'Looking forward to more business (and pleasure) together.'
Records for the Shield Master Fund show it grew from $38 million at June 2022 to $378 million a year later and then $480 million in two years of heavy activity.
First Guardian's accounts show its funds grew – albeit at a more modest pace – from $314 million in June 2022 to $466 million two years later.
Court documents show Alshakshir earned $42 million in fees from both schemes between early 2022 and late 2024. He used that money to buy a stately $3 million home, a Bentley and a massive diamond ring for his fiancee – a Melbourne DJ and kundalini expert who is living in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Merhi, who made about $12 million and Saad $21 million, according to court documents, expanded their local property holdings to include a farm and beach houses.
Unfortunately, for investors it was not such a good deal.
In late 2023, ASIC had cottoned onto the scheme and was investigating allegations large sums of investor money – supposed to be destined for the sharemarket and real estate – had been improperly invested by Anderson and Chiodo's ventures.
For Chiodo, that included paying an associate $165 million for building developments without any contracts in place or that person holding a building licence. Millions more had been spent developing projects where the land had not been acquired or, if it had, no building had commenced.
For craft beer enthusiast and die-hard foodie, Anderson, $70 million of his super members' money would be spent on granting loans to hospitality venues, brewers and taphouses he had privately invested in and then waiving repayment.
Also sadly for investors, the First Guardian investment in the Chiodo fund that inspired efforts by the fund's founders to draw in thousands more clients would never be recouped, forever intertwining the twin disasters of First Guardian and Shield.
Now the race is on for liquidators to claw back the 'marketing' payments by finding and selling the assets of the people involved and figuring out exactly who is to blame for the mess.
So far, that's been a hard task.
Last month, the Federal Court heard that Merhi had initially not properly complied with the orders requiring him to disclose his assets.
Counsel for ASIC, St John Hibble, also told the court the watchdog 'has raised issues with Mr Merhi and Mr Saad's cooperation' during compulsory interviews.
Alshakshir, who has business interests in Dubai, Indonesia and the UK including a high-end cologne brand, has had to update his asset disclosures to include his cryptocurrency holdings.
Back in Dubai, Hassan is living the high life operating a cryptocurrency business and online investment opportunities. When this masthead tracked him down spruiking gold stocks on messaging platform Telegram, he requested our questions be sent to him directly.
We did. He did not respond.