The office romance, the bushwalk and the red envelope stuffed with cash

A former transport department officer who was in a romantic relationship with the alleged mastermind of the scandal engulfing the NSW government agency has confessed she had detailed knowledge of his arrangements and assisted on multiple occasions with his schemes.

Katya Wang, a former Transport for NSW program governance and reporting officer, admitted her romantic partner and colleague Ibrahim Helmy gave her $6000 in cash benefits that he received from contractors, which she kept at home in a red envelope.

They began a romantic relationship in 2018, a few months after Wang started working at the government agency, which lasted more than six years until September 2024.

Wang told an anti-corruption inquiry on Tuesday that Helmy revealed to her his schemes, whereby he would add extra work items to invoices that were not delivered to Transport for NSW, while the pair were bushwalking on a first date in April 2018.

Helmy, 38, is accused of pocketing $11.5 million in kickbacks – including bundles of cash, gold bullion and cryptocurrency – over 15 years from nine contractors in return for them being awarded work.

The inquiry was shown a message Helmy allegedly sent to Wang on August 15, 2019, where he described himself as being “addicted” to kickback payments from contractors.

“It’s too much work … but I can’t stop lol [sic]. I got a taste of it five years ago and I’m still addicted … Addicted to that paymeeeent lol,” the message said.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations Ibrahim Helmy was the mastermind behind corrupt relationships with nine companies that were paid at least $343 million in contracts by Transport for NSW. He failed to appear before the ICAC in May and has been on the run from police since.

Wang said she assisted Helmy, both outside of work hours and off work premises, with legitimate “straightforward” tasks he was expected to perform at work, so it would free up time for him to work on corrupt arrangements he allegedly had with contractors.

Wang worked on spreadsheets, searched for formulas, moved information from old templates into new templates, and found documents for work orders, which ICAC counsel assisting Rob Ranken, SC, described as her “picking up the slack” for Helmy so he could focus on his “corrupt schemes”.

She also recounted one occasion where she helped Helmy count up to $20,000 worth of cash kickbacks at her apartment in Parramatta.

WhatsApp messages between the two, which were shown to the inquiry, also reveal Wang encouraged Helmy to influence his friend Naga on a line marking panel so they could collude and award work packages to Helmy’s preferred contractor.

“Is Naga who is your friend so you can give him some friendly direction,” Wang texted Helmy in July 2019.

Ranken suggested to Wang that she “wasn’t just a passive person” and was actively providing Helmy with suggestions so he could further his schemes.

Beyond the $6000 in cash kickbacks Wang knowingly pocketed from Helmy in exchange for her help with his arrangements, the two also used a gift card from a contractor to pay for hotel accommodation when they went to Dubbo for a holiday in October 2019, the inquiry was told.

The inquiry also heard Helmy used his access to the tender email by deleting whole submissions from contractors from the inbox so it would appear as if they had not submitted anything.

Wang told the inquiry she was also aware Helmy used an application to manipulate emails so the time and who it was sent from remained the same, all while the contents had been modified. She said Helmy used this application to alter the pricing of tenders.

Under questioning from Ranken, Wang accepted she was “generally in favour” of Helmy’s “corrupt schemes”.

“I wasn’t against it, maybe I didn’t think about it enough. I was not in favour of the amount of time he spent on them,” she said.

“I couldn’t change what he was doing … He made it sound very normal.”

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