From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, May fourteen, twenty twenty five. An expert posted pictures of deathcap mushrooms in the Victorian Bush and the Crown allegers Aaron Patterson drove to the location. A day later, mycologist Tom May told Patterson's murder trial the death cap doesn't grow in China. Despite the jury earlier hearing, Patterson claimed to have bought the mushrooms at a Chinese grosser.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty and we're covering her trial live at the Australian dot com.
Dot a U.
The Liberal Party's first female leader, Susan Lee, says she'll rebuild the coalition and factional allegiances and convince women to vote for them. Australia's most vulnerable people need the fifty billion dollar National Disability Insurance Scheme to make daily life possible, but whistleblowers say the government doesn't want to know about alleged raughts. Today, how crime journo David Murray used his shoe leather journalism skills to report a ripping NDIS scandal.
David Murray is the Australian's National crime correspondent. Dave's been covering this round for decades now, and one of the advantages of being around for a while is that sometimes familiar names pop up. Back in twenty fifteen, Dave was a keen young journal at Brisbane's Courier Mail, where he did a story about a man named Zafar Ikubal Khan. Khan was being sued by husband and wife doctors from
the smaller city of Toowoomba Ellis and Margaret Gibson. Theyde invested money in a business cahn't had created a dial a doctor scheme where you could have a GP come to your home for free. Thanks to a federal government rebate.
It had all turned sour. This couple said that they had put in more than a million dollars into this business and alleged in a Supreme Court case that Zaphyr had siphoned the money out and that basically the scheme was frauded up by design. Now, this was a couple.
They weren't very well. They'd been through some pretty tough times medically, and this business that had been set up into woman basically opened for a single day from memory, they saw something like three patients and then suddenly the whole thing closed down and they ended up having to take him to court. That settled out of court confidentially, so we never actually got to find out what happened with that case.
No wrongdoing was proven in that matter. Now Dave's here at The Australian, and earlier this year he started hearing the same name. Far Khn't.
I got a message out at the Blue from someone saying, look, you wrote this story almost ten years ago. Now you might want to know that this man's popped his head up again. You might be interested in having a chat about some of the things that have been going on with this business. And that's where it started for me.
Zafar Khan has started a new business, Cocoon SDA Care, and it had a parent company called Horizon.
Essentially, they weren't paying the staff. The staff had gone around six weeks without getting their wages. It went back a lot further than that. That staff hadn't been paid their superannuation. They were checking their accounts to see what I guess that accumulated, only to find that the business was behind in its payments.
The Australian's Reporter Kyle Road questions, A far khn't about the alleged under payments. When Dave's story broke last week, do you.
Have anything to say to your staff who haven't been paid?
I think NBA we'll repay them immediately.
Yes, Panics started settling in and the story started unraveling from there, which is what we now know is that in March, the National Disability Insurance Agency stopped automatically paying for the services that this business was claiming, and that caused obviously complete meltdown for this business. And we now know that an investigation had been launched into this company back in October last year by the NDIA. They did their groundwork, they passed on information to another team inside
that agency. They decided they needed to rather than just automatically pay this firm, they needed to run a fine toothcomb over all their claims. There were suspicions of fraud. There are all sorts of other allegations and concerns raised about this business, and that's only one aspect of this story. This case is now in the federal court. The company says, we need our money to continue operating. They want to stop the NDIA from doing what's called a manual audit
or of claims, going through everything, every single claim. You can imagine how long that takes. This is a company that has taken in more than one hundred million dollars in NDIS funding in the past two years.
The company's clients are some of Australia's most vulnerable people and they're in every state and territory.
If you look at their pr material, they say they've got a workforce of twenty four hundred. So it became apparent this was going to be a pretty big deal. If you've got a very big organization that can't pay its staff, then it was immediately apparent that's going to affect the care that's going to be offered to these vulnerable Australians who are relying in this company. One of the ways it's tires have been inflated really is inadvertently
by coverage in the Australian Financial Review. They have something called the Fast one hundred and this firm made that list last year at number fourteen on that list, was flagged as one of the fastest growing firms in the country. They celebrated this achievement. This firm used it in their
promotional material. And then in April this year, while they were in the middle of this massive word that was secretly going on in the background, an investigation that was tearing apart all their books and looking at them, they were attending an awards night for one of the best places to Work in Australia and that was again an AFAR event. They've got themselves a ticket. They didn't win, but they certainly used that event to promote themselves at the very time that they're being investigated.
As recently as March twenty twenty five, Zafar Khan was speaking about his business experience on a video podcast published by Alexander Spencer accounting firm.
To me, I think a droving taxi washing dishes, cleaning, we should not be shamed off. We should be shamed off. If we're being dishign essed we cheeto those, we should be shamed off.
Khan told the Australia Alliaans Kyle Road his company hasn't done anything wrong.
They are hundred percent honest, hundred percent honest. Knowing in the world. You know, to me, we don't want to feed our children on around money. Know in the world.
Ndis participants who rely.
On your business safe. Yes, we are trying our best to pass on to approved providers and we make sure that transition is good. We have given instructions that no care they are looked after.
Real The context of this DAVE is that the National Disability Insurance Scheme brought in by the previous Labor government was intended to provide some certainty for the most disabled people who have very high expenses for day to day life. The cost of the NDIS is blowing out enormously on one hand, because there's a range of disabilities which it's treating it and controversies about whether people with autism, for example, should be included, and then on the other hand waste
and roads. Of course, nothing has been proven yet about cocoon, but just talking generally about the NDI is Is it a surprise to you that kind of pot of money has attracted people with an entrepreneurial spirit.
No, I don't think that would be a surprise to anyone. It is a huge amount of money, it's a massive program. It's there for a good reason to help the people who need it most, but it's also attracting your unscrupulous elements who are going to try to make a quick buck. They're going to try to grow big very fast, getting on the ground floor. That's one thing that's becoming apparent to me in covering this story is that what we're looking at here is a firm that has grown very big,
very quickly. And when that happens, you get corners cut. Your services can be compromised, safety can be compromised. And this is what happened with the founder or co founder of this company, z Afakhan many years ago in New Zealand. He had a taxi training business and it grew and expanded and it went busts and he went bankrupt. Now Here he is showing up on this program with enormous amounts of government funding and trying to grow big very fast.
Some of the information that I've been finding is that Zafar and he's co founder, Muhammad Latif, were involved in a company that failed audits NDIS audits back in twenty twenty one, so four years ago. Yet they've still been able to continue operating in this space. We now know that there's been thirty two tip offs to federal authorities over the last four or so years, and I'm getting told, yes, we are seeing a crackdown on the unscrupulous operators on
fraud that has been happening. It has been having an impact, but it's a game of catch up. There's so much money there, there's so many operators. It is so loose. Like the thing that stands out to me about the operations of this company is that it has been able to be so loose in its operations despite the sensitive nature of what it's doing.
Some of their clients are so vulnerable, like the case that you've reported of three women with complex disabilities who went out for a regular visit to a hydrotherapy pull in late twenty twenty three and came back to find their gates to their house were padlocked. How could that possibly have happened?
It was quite remarkable, And I was getting tips about this for a little while and trying to confirm it and going to various sources and asking what they knew about it, And eventually I spoke to a number of people. Among those was a woman who was a career for these three women, they had really complex care needs. One of them had multiple sclerosis, one of them had an acquired brain injury. Two of them were unable to walk
without assistance. They required a lot of care. They go out to their regular hydro therapy session in the morning. Two hours later they come back and they no longer have a home. The padlocks have been put on the gates. They're barred because the owner of the house is being forced into really this terrible position of having to force them out of the property because they haven't been getting paid rent by Kacunesdacre, this company that's now under investigation.
This is all happening back in twenty twenty three. These three women had to go into emergency accommodation while this was sorted out. I'm told this rental dispute had been going on for quite some time. That have been a number of years since the rent had been paid on this property. And the owners, I'm told by the care lovely people, they did their best. They were so apologetic, but they simply couldn't continue on anymore. And this is
a thing. This business has been promoting itself as having twenty four hundred employees, but when you look at the books, there's less than half that number. It says it's got hundreds of homes, but then you take a closer look and these homes we're talking about some homes being built by investors who've been promised very big returns, only to
see those returns not materialize. They've been devastated by their dealing with this particular firm, with Zafa Khan, the co founder, who by all accounts, is the person pulling the strings, even though he's not the person on the paperwork for the company.
Has your business been claiming for services it didn't provide?
Never, not even one percent, not even one cent, not even one No one can prove it. We are pretty transplanted company. Honest company, incredible company, yes, and even real mind even.
Coming up a former executive blows the whistle on cocuon SDA. One of the people who's come forward to speak to you is Tanya Quinn, who was briefly chief executive of Kakun SDA. Care what's she telling you about her attempts to blow the whistle.
This is just one of those incredible stories that just seemed to come out of nowhere. She worked for this firm as their chief executive for a matter of days max a week before she realized. She says, how diet things were within this company, how problematic their operations were.
She started asking questions, and within that week her access was cut and she was out of the firm, so soon after she'd been announced being the one who's going to be leading it, and she has provided evidence that she went to the then NDIS Minister Bill Shorten about that at the time.
We've used a voice actor to bring you the words spoken by whistleblower Tanya Quinn.
I downloaded everything I could. I went directly to Bill Shorten, went to ask went to Quality and Safeguards, Ato just gave them all the information I had, and then nothing happened. When I followed up, I had a meeting with the NDIS and they took the details and said we'll call you, we'll get you back in to sign your statement, and then they never ever did, and I'm still waiting. I saw something online where the NDIS was talking about protections
for whistleblowers. I sort of responded to him, I said, you're misrepresenting the situation. I came forward with what I think is like a massive scandal, and I think I've got evidence. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, and you've offered me nothing, no protection.
And now she's watching all of this unfold and in the stories that we've been covering, in the investigations that are now ongoing, and she's saying, I told you this a couple of years ago.
David Murray is The Australian's National crime correspondent. You can follow Dave's reporting anytime at the Australian dot com dot au