Alleged kickback mastermind told his brother he needed to ‘leg it’ to Egypt

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The alleged mastermind of a kickback scandal engulfing NSW’s transport department told his younger brother he needed to “leg it” to Egypt several months after his home was raided, and the pair later messaged each other and spoke while he was hiding from police, an inquiry has heard.

In a WhatsApp message exchange on December 6 last year, now sacked Transport for NSW official Ibrahim Helmy communicated with his brother about the investigation that was under way into the former’s involvement in allegedly hatching a kickback scheme with road contractors which spanned 12 years.

In the exchange, Ibrahim told his brother Mohamed that “I gota [sic] leg it to Egypt real sooooo”, which prompted his sibling to ask him “how soon” that would happen.

Mohamed Helmy appears in the witness box at the ICAC inquiry on Thursday.

“Either this month or Jan at the latest,” Ibrahim replied.

The messages came three months after police raided the Transport official’s Merrylands home and seized $12,317 in cash, gold bullion bars and nuggets, as well as a Maserati, $413,000 worth of cryptocurrency held by him, and the equivalent of $8 million in cryptocurrency account in his sister’s name.

The inquiry has previously heard that Ibrahim Helmy, who migrated to Australia from Egypt with his family in the late 1990s, was stopped at Sydney Airport from boarding a flight to Shanghai on December 22 last year using an American passport. His Australian passport had been seized at the time.

Sacked Transport for NSW official Ibrahim Helmy appears in the witness box on Thursday.

Five months later, police began searching for him after he failed to appear before the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s inquiry. A family member previously told the ICAC that Helmy took the rubbish out on a Sunday night in May and did not return.

Helmy, 38, is accused of being the mastermind behind corrupt relationships with nine companies that were paid at least $343 million in contracts by Transport for NSW in return for paying bribes to him and several other officials. He is alleged to have pocketed $11.5 million in kickbacks from the contractors.

In his second day in the witness box, Mohamed Helmy was grilled on his sibling’s remarks about fleeing the country and evidence that showed he repeatedly communicated with Ibrahim while he was hiding from police for four months before he was found in a cupboard in a Lakemba apartment in September.

Mohamed repeatedly told the hearing that he only “suspected” a Facebook Messenger account was that of his brother’s despite ICAC counsel assisting Rob Ranken, SC, putting the proposition to him that he was fully aware it was his brother’s because call logs had shown they had both messaged each other and spoken.

The call logs showed Mohamed Helmy spoke to his brother, who was using an account in the name of Ozman Barack, for 34 minutes on June 2, and also attempted to contact him on June 15, 23, 26 and 30.

Ranken also cited a private examination Mohamed had with the ICAC on July 2 this year in which he said he had not tried to contact him since he had disappeared.

Later, Mohamed accepted that he had been in contact with his brother after he left his Merrylands home in May, but maintained that he did now know his location. “I was just trying to tell him to come out of hiding,” he said.

Mohamed maintained he did not know where in Lakemba his brother was staying while a warrant was out for his arrest. However, he confirmed that he did drive him from his Merrylands home where Ibrahim had lived with his parents for years to a location near the Lakemba train station one night in May.

The inquiry was also shown WhatsApp messages between the pair two years ago in which Ibrahim Helmy accused his younger brother of stealing $300,000 in cash from his bedroom in his parents’ Merrylands home.

In the messages on February 17, 2023, Ibrahim Helmy told his brother to stay outside the Merrylands home as he had “locked the doors” and was “not talking to u any more”.

A short time later, Ibrahim told him “you stole 300k” to which his brother said: “I wasn’t myself.”

Ibrahim responded by accusing his brother of lying and telling him “you went into my room while I’m at work … in daylight”.

Questioned about his brother’s accusation, Mohamed denied that he stole $300,000 and said the souring of his relationship with his sibling in 2023 related to a “crypto deal gone wrong”.

He was later shown evidence he gave to the ICAC in April in which he said he was “not too sure, but [did not] think it was that much” when asked whether he took $300,000 from his brother.

Under intense questioning from Ranken about whether he took money from his brother, Mohamed said: “Yes it was me that took it, but I didn’t steal it because it was my money. But I did take that out from his room.”

Over two days of hearings, Mohamed has repeatedly denied having knowledge of his brother’s corrupt relationships, or assisting him in trading cryptocurrency.

The public inquiry into the kickbacks is part of an ICAC investigation known as Operation Wyvern, the fourth into corruption in procurement processes at Transport for NSW since 2019. Hearings continue on Friday.

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