Sydney’s business community is reeling this morning after property developer and businessman Michael McGurk was shot dead last night outside his family home in the exclusive suburb of Cremorne.
McGurk was alive at the scene when police arrived but died shortly after. It has been reported his nine-year-old son witnessed the shooting.
McGurk, a father of four, had become involved in a string of property disputes in recent years with prominent developers Adam and Ben Tilley and Ron Medich.
There is no suggestion McGurk’s murder is connected with these cases.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, McGurk was due to appear in the NSW Supreme Court today in relation to caveats he had placed over properties owned by the brothers Ben and Adam Tilley, who are prominent Sydney property developers.
McGurk had been facing charges of arson and assault over the fire-bombing of two houses, including Adam Tilley’s house in the wealthy Sydney suburb of Point Piper. However, these charges were dropped about two weeks ago.
McGurk had also been involved in 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 the SMH, 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 “extracting” 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.
