Former Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross is reported to be running an escort agency based at residential apartments at Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour.
The unusual career change was recently exposed by online news outlet Newsroom and its award-winning reporter Melanie Reid.
Ross unsuccessfully stood for re-election to Parliament at the 2020 general election as co-leader of the Advance NZ party, gaining less than one per cent of the party vote nationwide.
According to Newsroom, Ross is running the escort business, named Sapphire Blue, under the pseudonym Dylan Rose.
Reid’s story details the concerns of multiple women who worked for Ross’s agency.
The unnamed escorts told someone identified as a “trusted person” of their concerns relating to their working conditions.
The women alleged they’d been “left alone in apartments across several unmonitored locations without adequate safety protocols or panic alarms”.
They also talked of “client assaults and intimidation without follow-up support for physical or emotional well-being”.
The Times has spoken to a former colleague of Ross’s about the allegations levelled by the escorts.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, says: “It’s an interlude to a tale that shocks but does not surprise me.
“Regardless of the business he is in he should take the health and safety of his employees seriously, especially given the vulnerable profession they work in.”
The escorts’ allegations are not the first time Ross has courted controversy.
In 2018 Newsroom published a series of explosive stories about the then-MP, detailing allegations he’d manipulated women into sexual relationships outside his marriage, engaged in controlling and emotionally abusive behaviour, and bullied and sexually harassed female staffers.
Three of the seven women said they’d suffered mental breakdowns.
In early 2020 Ross was the subject of a workplace investigation into his Botany electorate office after three of his staff members were placed on special leave.
A three-month investigation substantiated allegations of a toxic environment within the office and that Ross had engaged in “lies and mind games” with a staffer.
Complaints Ross had made several inappropriate sexualised comments to a female staff member and that favouritism was shown toward another female staffer were “substantiated in part”.
One of Ross’ female staffers described him as a “predator” and a “creep” and said he had told he would have sex with her but he wasn’t allowed to.
Allegations relating to bullying and humiliation were not substantiated.
Ross told the Times in February 2020 that while he didn’t accept he had “acted in an inappropriate manner”, “the job, for all in the team, is performed under high pressure and stress at times”.
“As a result and with a small team of assigned staff, not all personalities can or do gel. If I am meant to have said anything that has offended or upset any employee, once I know what this is, I will confront that.”
In October 2022 Ross was acquitted of charges relating to electoral donations made to the National Party in 2017 and 2018 following a lengthy trial at the Auckland High Court.
His lawyers, Ron Mansfield KC and Hannah Stuart, successfully argued Ross had repeatedly lied when he spoke publicly in late 2018 of his own alleged involvement with the donations.
The recent Newsroom story on Ross’s escort business states police had earlier this year been called to one of the apartments in which it’s based.
One of the escorts told Reid that clients who had mistreated women working for Sapphire Blue had been able to make additional bookings and the women felt unsafe and unprotected as a result.
Raising concerns with Ross had no impact, she said.
According to the NZ Companies Register, Ross is the director of a business named Praesidium Life Ltd, which sells products it claims protect users from 5G radiation.
He’s also a former director of and shareholder in a company named Ashleigh International Ltd, which is described as a health supplement retailing business.
The Times attempted to contact Ross for comment but he did not respond.
