Bakir wants Corby money back

news.com.au ^ | June 22, 2005 | Greg Stolz and wires

[Critical Bill]

SCHAPELLE Corby's mother last night called on her jailed daughter's self-appointed white knight, Gold Coast mobile phone entrepreneur Ron Bakir, to get out of her daughter's life. Rosleigh Rose said Mr Bakir's "meddling" was partly to blame for her daughter's 20-year sentence for drug-smuggling and was angry at demands for $500,000 in expenses he has claimed to have made.

"We didn't ask him to come on board, we didn't know him from a bar of soap, and now it seems like he's trying to profit from Schapelle's misery," Ms Rose said.

She spoke on the eve of a Bulletin magazine article examining Mr Bakir's involvement in Corby's defence.

In the article, Ms Rose describes Mr Bakir as more of a "black knight" than a white knight and said she was "cranky (about) people trying to make money out of Schapelle in that hellhole".

Mr Bakir registered the Schapelle Corby website and the company name Schapelle Corby Pty Ltd with himself as a director, without informing Corby or her family.

The article also quotes Mark Trowell, one of two Perth QCs appointed by the Australian Government to help with Corby's appeal, alleging that Corby's Indonesian legal consultant, Vasu Rasiah, had forced her to sign away 50 per cent of any earnings from book or film deals.

Mr Trowell last month told Mr Bakir to "zip his lip", saying his "limited financial support" did not entitle him to speak on Corby's behalf.

Bakir, who emerged in February, four months after Corby's arrest for smuggling 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali in a boogie board bag, has taken credit for bankrolling her legal defence. A member of Corby's Bali legal team, Lily Lubis, has denied today MR Bakir had ever said he wanted the money back.

Ms Lubis told The Sydney Morning Herald she was "certain there was no conversation like that".

But Ms Rose confirmed the family was until recently unaware that the Australian Government had picked up the $100,000 bill.

She said that Mr Bakir had visited her daughter in Bali's Kerobokan jail and told her he was owed $500,000.

Ms Rose said while she believed Bakir wanted to help her daughter, "I do think he's got ulterior motives".

Mr Bakir's claim during the trial that Indonesian prosecutors took bribes, Ms Rose said, had done her daughter "no good at all".

Neither Mr Bakir nor Corby's Australian lawyer, Robin Tampoe, could be contacted for comment last night.

[Critical Bill]

This kind of sums up the case: Crook swindling the convict

[Americanexpat]

Mr. Bakir had ulterior motives? Yeah, 500,000 of them.

[Red Sea Swimmer]

The whole lot of them, including Bakir, the Family and Miss Corby are Birds of a Feather.

[Critical Bill]

I find it very hard to see how he justifies a bill of 500k. I mean come on, even apart from the fact it ws a show trial, what costs did the defence incur?

[ken5050]

The mother is really hurting her daughter's chances of any mediation. If they had kept quiet, low key...and the daughter had admitted some complicity...the Australian government coudl hav probably negotiated a deal with Indonesia...say, after 2 years in an Indonesioan prison, she get repatriated back to Australian to serve her sentence there, and she'd be eligible for parole in a few years..but once you make a media circus of it...

[Americanexpat]

I have seen other Americans and nationalities arrested and throw into foreign jails and all lawyers read off the same guidebook. Build up the clients hopes that you can get them out when you know in most cases you can't, then suck the families dry.

Some of these people were criminals and I had no sympathy for them. Others I have had doubts about. I know for a fact that the cops under Noriega used to pull Americans over for a traffic stop and while on cop was talking to him the other cop would search the car and would find a bag of drugs.

Some of them would take a bribe. Some Americans refused to play that game and ended up in prison for it, at the minimum their careers (if in the military) were shot.