Sydney property developer and former rich list member Ron Medich has been charged over the murder of fellow property developer Michael McGurk.
NSW police arrested 62 year-old Medich on Wednesday afternoon at his solicitor’s offices in Sydney’s CBD. According to a statement from the NSW police, he was then taken to the Sydney Police Centre and charged with solicit to murder.
He was scheduled to appear via video-link at Central Local Court on Wednesday.
McGurk was gunned down outside his Sydney home on 3 September, 2009, in front of his young son.
Detective Superintendent Peter Cotter, commander of the Homicide Squad, told reporters that police will allege Medich “commissioned” people to arrange and carry out McGurk’s muder.
“We would say there’s a number of business ventures between the businessman and Michael McGurk. Those businesses turned sour. There was litigation operating at the time. It was pure economics that was the real motive.”
Last week, police charged four men in relation to McGurk’s murder. Former boxing champion Lucky Gattellari was charged with soliciting the murder and being an accessory after the fact. His associate Senad Kaminic, 42, was charged with being an accessory both before and after the fact to murder.
Haissam Safetli, aged 45, was charged with murder and soliciting to murder, while Christopher Chafic Estephan, 20, an associate of Safetli, was also charged with murder.
The murder of McGurk shocked Sydney’s business community and also caused controversy in political circles, as McGurk had alleged prior to his death he had audio tapes that revealed corruption in the NSW Government.
However, McGurk was also involved in a series of property disputes around the time of his death, including a property dispute between Adam Tilley and another wealthy entrepreneur, Ron Medich, over the 2004 sale of a mansion by Medich to Tilley. According to reports at the time, Medich appointed McGurk to recover money owed over the sale.
But Federal Court documents show Medich and McGurk were locked in a separate dispute over McGurk’s role in “extricating” Medich from an investment in the then-listed lender Amazing Loans (which has since been delisted following a takeover deal).
According to the court documents, Medich had invested about $25 million in Amazing Loans but had become unhappy with the direction being taken by the company’s chief executive, Paul Mathieson.
“Mr McGurk says, and it does not appear to have been denied, that Mr Medich entrusted him with the task of extricating Mr Medich from his investment in Amazing Loans Limited,” Federal Court judge Peter Graham wrote.
Justice Graham said the two formed an arrangement under which Medich would keep the $3 million which he had already been able to recover but that “thereafter, monies recovered would be divided as to two thirds to the Medich interests and one third to the McGurk interests once recoveries had exceeded a $14 million threshold”.
McGurk got Medich out of the investment, but a dispute over the payment of his commission eventually landed in the Federal Court.
“Because I was under the belief that McGurk helped me recover my funds my confidence in him increased and I trusted him,” Medich said in a statement to the court.
“I actually gave McGurk $3.8 million to pay off mortgages over his home at Cranbrook Avenue, Cremorne… just before I recovered the money from Amazing Loans as his commission.”
The two then became involved in a further dispute involving the purchase of two properties in Mowbray in Queensland and the other at Gerroa in NSW.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
