A Melbourne doctor allegedly kept a refugee as a slave, working him 14 hours a day without breaks, supplying him opioids for pain and threatening to have him killed, adding “no one will know”, a tribunal has been told. Dr Seyyed Ali Abdolzadeh Farshchi failed to pay the Iranian refugee for three months because he was “in training” but eventually paid him $10 an hour, irregularly, and he didn’t receive the full amount, according to a police summary provided to VCAT. The victim, named X, worked 14 hours a day without breaks and alleges he sometimes he worked 21-hour days. He alleges the Iranian trained doctor gave him opioids to “get his power again” despite being tired and in pain from long working hours. However when on one occasion he had a seizure and collapsed, his workmates were told by Dr Farshchi not to call an ambulance but instead bring him to his office. The doctor didn’t see him, and when X later asked: “Didn’t you think I might die?”, he responded “he would put X’s body in the septic tank and dissolve it with acid”, the summary alleges. When X raised issues about his pay, Dr Farshchi allegedly threatened to get members of the local Iranian community to put a bag over his head and throw him in the ocean, adding “no one will know”. The tribunal was told X feared the doctor and sometimes vomited at work due to stress, believing “eventually Dr Farshchi will destroy him”. Dr Farshchi is charged with causing a person to enter into or remain in forced labour and conducting a business involving forced labour between July 2015 to March 2017 but has strenuously denied the allegations. Dr Farshchi faces Melbourne Magistrates Court in February.
