"Blue-chip companies used security firm facing massive tax, workplace probes", 4 December 2025

Some of Australia’s biggest retailers, including Coles, Bunnings and Amazon, have been drawn into investigations into suspected foreign worker exploitation and a multimillion-dollar tax evasion scandal involving a booming bikie-linked security company and a shadow workforce of thousands of security guards.

The retail giants using MA Services Group’s security guards have joined its other clients – including the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, several AFL clubs and government agencies and departments – in scrambling to deal with their exposure to growing investigations into the company’s alleged malpractice.

Coles has become the first major player to move, announcing on Wednesday afternoon that it had launched an inquiry.

MA Services is part of a web of companies subject to separate investigations, including by the Tax Office and liquidators, over suspected involvement in a tax rort and worker exploitation scheme. Sources close to the liquidation are calling it, if proved, potentially one of the biggest employee tax frauds in corporate history because of the scale of MA’s workforce.

Liquidators and government authorities are examining whether thousands of workers have been underpaid and denied basic entitlements such as superannuation and penalty rates. [...]

In a statement on Wednesday, MA Services said it had considered but not proceeded with the opportunity to provide security on Nauru. It insisted it was not aware of Jones’ longstanding deep links to bikie gangs and that he had ceased employment with the company in June.

The investigations into worker exploitation and tax fraud facing MA involve its provision of thousands of guards across Australia, including at Coles stores, Kmart, major sporting events such as the spring carnival, ports and local, state and federal agencies and construction projects.

It is not only MA – which has hired two PR companies in as many weeks and called in a top legal firm to fend off allegations of wrongdoing – that is facing serious questions, but its blue-chip corporate and government clients, who appear to have overlooked red flags in the company’s operation. [...]

It involves allegations that MA is operating a shadow security guard workforce of several thousand migrant employees across Australia who, while wearing MA uniforms, are employed by front companies that in turn utilise corrupt payroll firms to underpay workers, denying them superannuation or other entitlements, while avoiding tax obligations. [...]