Ron Medich: The millionaire with Sydney in the palm of his hand
Updated
Some members of Sydney's establishment were ready to tuck in.
Sitting at the table was disgraced former New South Wales resources and energy minister Ian Macdonald, millionaire property developer Ron Medich and executives from a major energy company.
In was July 2009 and Macdonald — known as Sir Lunchalot — had arranged the dinner, at Tuscany Restaurant in Leichardt, to give Medich a chance to press the flesh with the powerbrokers.
Medich was keen to promote his business interests and the stakes were high. He had already lent about $15 million to various energy companies.
Meanwhile, Macdonald's reward for making the introduction was named Tiffany, waiting at a hotel room in town.
Under ordinary circumstances, this meal between a minister and a millionaire might seem like the top end of town munching together.
In reality, it was anything but.
The dinner was probed during a 2011 hearing at the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), although exactly how the meeting unfolded depends on who you talk to.
Medich told the hearing he did not even want to be there and barely knew Sir Lunchalot.
That account is disputed by Medich's former sidekick Fortunato "Lucky" Gattellari, who claims the millionaire dropped Macdonald at the Four Seasons hotel in The Rocks, where Tiffany — a prostitute — was waiting.
This would not be the last time Gattellari and Medich would disagree in the halls of justice, but more on that later.
The truth is, it does not matter exactly what happened that day, it's that Medich had a seat at the table at all.
Yes, this is how the veteran developer did business, in his own seedy Sydney style.
Lucky's tongue 'dripping with lies'
On September 3, two months after the Tuscany meeting, Michael McGurk, a former associate of Medich's, was executed in his driveway.
The 45-year-old had been returning to his Cremorne home with a takeaway. His then nine-year-old son was in the car too.
Yesterday, Medich was found guilty of ordering and paying for the hit on McGurk and later intimidating his wife Kimberley.
It is not alleged that Macdonald is in anyway connected to the murder, only that he knew Medich.
During the trial, Crown prosecutor Sharon Harris told the jury Mr McGurk and Medich had once been involved in multi-million-dollar business partnerships, including property developments and financing.
However, Ms Harris said that by March 2009 their relationship had become "extremely hostile" and they were locked in expensive legal battles in the supreme and federal courts.
She said Medich was feeling "embarrassment, anger and frustration" and had developed a hatred for Mr McGurk and that he turned to Gattellari to "permanently resolve" the disputes.
Medich's two trials (the first one ended in a hung jury) were a veritable who's who of the Harbour City's criminal underbelly, and Gattellari was the star of the show.
He was already in jail after pleading guilty to organising the murder.
While Gattellari and Medich were once close confidants, by the time of the latter's first trial in January 2017, they were in direct conflict.
Lucky was spilling the beans on the murder plot to authorities, and in return had received a 60 per cent discount on his sentence.
At his own trial, Gattellari's evidence was described as "exceptional" and accounted for almost 600 pages of the prosecution brief. Even one of his statements was 480 pages long.
However, by the time Medich was in court, Lucky's status as a turncoat and convicted murderer led the millionaire's legal team to describe him as "scum" whose "tongue was dripping with lies".
At the time, detective inspector Mick Sheehy said he had never seen such extensive information from one person in his three decades in the police force.
'You're a shocker'
As well as Medich and Gattellari, three other men were arrested over McGurk's murder.
They were Lucky's driver Senad Kaminic, Haissam Safetli, who the Crown described as the man who "likely" shot McGurk and Christopher Estephan, who was the getaway driver.
Kaminic pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and was jailed for two and a half years in 2013.
Safetli — the man the Crown said was likely to have been the shooter — was sentenced to at least seven years behind bars in August 2013.
The following year, Estephan admitted to being an accessory after the fact and was also jailed.
The pins were beginning to fall, but Medich — the murder's mastermind — remained on bail.
He was due to stand trial in 2016, but the jury was discharged in July after significant new material was tendered by the prosecution.
Ron Medich the millionaire seemed a distant memory as more criminals began queuing up to dump on him.
Eventually his first trial got underway in January 2017.
Gattellari's cellmate Shayne Hatfield — a convicted drug importer — gave evidence at it. Kaminic, by now a free man, also did.
He claimed that during a prison visit to see his former boss, Gattellari had recalled a conversation where Medich "wanted to go all the way".
Medich's first trial ended in a hung jury.
However the jury of 11 men at his second trial yesterday found him guilty.
The same month Mr McGurk was gunned down, Medich appeared at a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into allegations of corruption in planning decisions.
However, the probe into land in Sydney's west took a sinister turn.
Then-Greens MP Sylvia Hale shocked the room when she asked Medich whether he had "any involvement" in McGurk's murder.
"You've got to be joking. You're a shocker," Medich said.
The question was overruled immediately.
As it turns out, it was almost 10 years ahead of its time.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, murder-and-manslaughter, sydney-2000
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