Suspended rugby league star Jarrod Mullen has parted company with real estate partner Zaheer Azmi, a businessman who once owned a peptides-supply company with banned sports scientist Stephen Dank.
The Newcastle Herald reported in May that Mullen had signed a five-year partnership deal as a brand ambassador for Luxland Investments, a property company founded by Azmi and specialising in Newcastle and Central Coast real estate.
Fairfax Media reported in 2013 that Azmi and Dank were two of four owners of the Medical Rejuvenation Clinic based in the Royal Arcade in Oxford Street, Bondi Junction, from August 2011.
The business, which sold peptides legally to the public, stopped operating in early 2013 after the Australian Crime Commission issued a report on how illegal performance-enhancing drugs were being distributed to professional athletes.
Both the Australian Crime Commission and ASADA believed the clinic was a prime source of peptides being used by NRL players.
A new company, Medical Rejuvenation Clinic Bondi Pty Ltd, reopened several months later as an online business, mrcpeptides.com.au, owned only by Dank and Edward Van Spanje, whose bodybuilder son, Adam, was one of the original owners.
Dank helped devise supplements programs at the Cronulla Sharks and Essendon Bombers. He was banned from sport for life in 2015 and was hurt in a drive-by shooting at his Melbourne home in July last year.
Azmi, 33, was born in Newcastle and moved to the Central Coast when he was five. He started his career managing nightclubs in Kings Cross and also invested in clubs and a hair salon.
Fairfax Media has reported that Azmi and Adam Van Spanje were also part owners of an escort agency, Sydney High Class.
“I was a start-up investor of Medical Rejuvenation Clinic but exited the business in 2013 when I found out Stephen Dank was servicing professional athletes,” Azmi told the Herald in late May.
“Furthermore I have had no association or contact with Stephen Dank or any involvement in the medical anti-ageing industry since exiting the business 2013.”
Azmi said he had met Mullen in February and was “committed to helping Jarrod rebuild his life”.
But a company spokesman said on Friday that Luxland had ended its relationship with Mullen about a month ago as there was “no benefit” in it for the firm.
Mullen’s agent, Steve Gillis, said Mullen would not comment.
The former Knight was banned for four years in May after testing positive to the banned steroid drostanolone.
