meet the corbys: dad busted for drugs

the australian newspaper

Meet the Corbys: dad busted for drugs
Jennifer Sexton and Greg Roberts
May 21, 2005
SCHAPELLE Corby's father has admitted he was caught with drugs at a similar age to his 27-year-old daughter, but - like her - says the cannabis "wasn't mine".

"I got a $400 fine for about 2g of marijuana which wasn't mine. Some girl had it and they busted the whole joint and I had to go along for the ride," Michael Corby told The Weekend Australian last night.

And six weeks before Ms Corby landed at Bali's Ngurah Rai airport with 4.1kg of marijuana in her bodyboard bag, her half-brother Clinton Rose was locked up in a Queensland jail.

Rose will get out in about four months while Ms Corby will find out in six days whether a Bali court decides to accept the prosecution's recommendation of a life sentence - or worse - or set her free as an unwitting drug mule.

The colourful family history also extends to new friends. As the verdict approaches, tensions within the family have emerged over a deal Ms Corby's self-appointed white knight, Ron Bakir - a discharged bankrupt - has attempted to strike to ensure he gets 50 per cent of proceeds from likely book and film deals arising from her ordeal.


Some family members, including Mr Corby, expressed concern over the proposed profit-sharing arrangement.

The revelations about Mr Corby's brush with the law in the ealy 1970s and Rose's background come despite the Corby clan repeatedly insisting that no member of the family had a criminal history or was involved with the drug trade.

But when Rose was previously in jail in 2001, Ms Corby and her sister Mercedes were among his visitors.

Senior judge Gilbert Trafford-Walker found Rose guilty of break and enter, stealing, fraud and the unlawful use of a motor vehicle at the Queensland's District Court on August 26 last year.

While Ms Corby shares a squalid cell with seven others, Rose is serving out his 12-month sentence in the relatively salubrious surrounds of the eight-year-old, $55million, Woodford Correctional Centre north of Brisbane.

John Howard said yesterday Australia was getting closer to establishing a treaty that could allow Ms Corby, if convicted, to serve out part of her time in Australia. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said there was a possibility she would be transferred to Brisbane Women's Prison if she were found guilty.

Mercedes, who lives in Bali with her husband, was asked on the Nine Network's Sunday program to quell rumours of relatives being involved in the drugs trade.

"If there is anybody in your family, a stepfather, a distant relative ... Is there anybody who's ever been convicted or involved in the drugs trade?"

Mercedes replied: "No. Not that I know of. Nah. There wouldn't be."

Mr Corby said Mercedes would not have been alive when he was found guilty of drug possession in the mid-1970s, and would not be in a position to know.

"She wouldn't even bloody know; she wasn't even born."

But he described Rose as the black sheep of the family.

"We don't talk about him. We don't want to know about him. We don't know where he came from -- he's not like any of us.

"He's in the slammer, he gets out in two months but he'll probably end up back there.

"He should be a con-man or a politician; he lies so beautifully. He doesn't realise how much he's hurting the family."

Mr Corby said his own drugs charges were laid during Joh Bjelke-Petersen's reign, when Queensland police had a reputation for heavy-handed conduct.

"They (the charges) were all scrubbed, because it was the Bjelke-Petersen days, where if you had an ugly face or you were in the wrong place you got pushed around."

A similar drug quantity in Indonesia carries a 10-year prison term.

Mr Corby also admitted to "half a dozen" drink-driving charges, but said "who hasn't?".

He is also understood to be concerned about a deal Mr Bakir, the Gold Coast-based mobile phone millionaire, had negotiated with Ms Corby and Mercedes.

It was negotiated last month on the basis that Mr Bakir had been funding the legal battle being spearheaded by his close friend Robin Tampoe, of Hoolihan's Lawyers on the Gold Coast. The deal also tied the accused drug trafficker to retaining Hoolihan's Lawyers, family sources said.

But Mercedes yesterday denied she and Ms Corby had signed any agreement. "There's no agreement with Ron Bakir; we never signed anything," Mercedes said.

Mr Bakir refused to talk about the arrangements his agents had discussed with the Corby family, but said there were no negotiations on the table. "I am doing what I have to do to bring Ms Corby home," Mr Bakir said.

"If some family members are unhappy about it, that's a matter for them but maybe they don't understand why I do things. I ask them to take into consideration that for three or four months on this case, I have put a lot of time and effort into it and given 100 per cent of myself."

Mr Bakir refused to talk about how much he had spent on her case, but some of the creditors of the companies he formerly controlled are wondering when they might get paid.

He was declared bankrupt on June 27, 2002, $2.39million in the red after splitting with his fiancee and partner in the Crazy Ron's (now Mad Ron's) mobile phone business, Joenny Doueihi.

The creditors of Crazy Ron's Pty Ltd (in liquidation) - owed a total of $2.26million - include a children's charity for troubled teenage boys, Toogoolawa - owed $19,866 - and the tax office, owed $119,465. Last month another of the complex web of Crazy Ron companies went into administration, Crazy Ron's Communications Pty Ltd, with $1.3million in creditors' claims, including $169,299 from the tax office.

Mr Bakir is no longer a director of the Crazy Ron or Mad Ron companies, but he is the face of Mad Ron's.

Rival mobile phone company Crazy John's spent about $1million taking the Crazy Ron's group of companies to court over the right to be called Crazy, and Mr Bakir lost, with costs.

Crazy John's managing director Brendan Fleiter said his company is still owed $517,000 in costs, and Ms Doueihi claims $475,000 in costs to her lawyers is outstanding four years after the case closed.

"Funding Schapelle Corby is all well and good, but you should pay your creditors first," Mr Fleiter said.

As the debate rages, the seven Indonesian women who share Schapelle Corby's jail cell in Bali have no doubt that she will be going home.

They have been given 20 balls of beige wool and 20 balls of blue wool by her family and are knitting her a shawl as a farewell gift in the belief she will be returning to an Australian winter. For Ms Corby's family, the strain is showing.

"All this rubbish about my little girl being a prostitute and getting pregnant in jail and the rest of it, it's just getting too much," Mr Corby said. "How the hell are we supposed to deal with this? She's not a bad girl. She doesn't deserve this. It's just so stressful."

As she awaits her fate, her old life remains.

Ms Corby's Gold Coast bedroom is a simple affair. A cloth rabbit she has had forever sits on a mattress on the floor. Wildlife and American Indians feature on a couple of simple wall posters. A small collection of trinkets and bracelets are strewn across a bedside table.

Ms Corby shared a rambling, high-set brick home in the old suburb of Tugun with her father, brother Michael, 29, Mercedes, 30, Mercedes' Indonesian-born husband, Wayan, and their two small children.

The family was even more multicultural when Ms Corby met Japanese surfer Kimi Tanakam, while holidaying on the Gold Coast. The couple moved to Japan and married in 1998, but separated a few months later and were divorced in 2003.

The walls of the Tugun house are dotted with photographs of the Corby family. Ms Corby's rusting Corolla hatchback is parked outside.

Additional reporting: Cath Hart