Ron Bakir

Early life

Bakir was born in Lebanon in 1977.

At the age of 17, Bakir established the mobile phone chain Crazy Ron's in Queensland, Australia, establishing the business in 1995. Crazy Ron's entered voluntary administration after declaring insolvency in early April 2005.

HomeCorp Group

Bakir founded HomeCorp Property Group in 2004. HomeCorp is a private urban development company headquartered on the Gold Coast, Queensland. HomeCorp began as a company delivering small home and land projects to Australian property investors and has grown to achieve over $800 million in accumulated sales since 2004 across 15 projects. The company has been considered successful, despite Australia property development slowing down during the Financial crisis of 2007–08, with Bakir attributing the constant growth to HomeCorp's extensive market research. HomeCorp has delivered projects in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland.

Bakir was awarded the Gold Coast Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013 for his leadership of the HomeCorp Property Group. The awards are judged by Business News Publications and aim to recognise young business owners operating in the Gold Coast region aged 40 or under.

In 2013, the Rockhampton Regional Council approved plans for 950 residential lots in the community currently known as the ‘Pineapple Patch', with HomeCorp announcing a $500 million project in the location.

Association with Schapelle Corby

In 2005, Bakir donated an undisclosed sum of money to the legal defence of Schapelle Corby.

Bakir retained the services of the Australian law firm Hoolihans to "Investigate the claim and gather evidence, provide advice in respect of the claim, attend to all procedures necessary for the disclosure by Australian or other bodies of information relevant to the defence, including attendance at conferences with representatives of such bodies, appearing before the media or presenting press releases which may assist the matter, issue Court proceedings if necessary, assist in attending to all pre-trial preparation, engage counsel and other experts, attend at trial as necessary and attend to all such other matters as required."

Bakir claims to have no relationship to Corby other than being from the same city. He reportedly decided to help fund Corby's defence because he believed that a miscarriage of justice could occur if she were not properly represented. He pledged A$100,000 towards the A$1,000,000 reward fund, but the full reward was never raised.

Before the prosecution announced their sentencing recommendation, Bakir accused the prosecution team (chief prosecutor Ida Bagus Wiswantanu) of seeking a bribe to reduce the requested sentence. The prosecution team and the Indonesian government vehemently denied that this had occurred. Bakir quickly issued a written apology to Indonesian authorities for his statements.

After her sentencing, Corby sacked her main Indonesian defence lawyer, Lily Lubis, and Indonesian case co-ordinator Vasu Rasiah in July 2005, when Australian lawyer Mark Trowell QC told the media that Rasiah had asked him to request A$500,000 from the Australian government, money meant to bribe the judges of the appeal court.

Bakir registered a company titled Schapelle Corby Pty Ltd, stating that he wanted to protect her name from people who wanted to exploit it. Some raised doubts as to his motives, although Schapelle's cousin, Melissa Younger, told the media that his support was genuine.

In June 2005, Bakir formally ended his involvement in Schapelle's defence, stating that he had done everything in his power to help her, including contributing more than $200,000 to her campaign. By 22 July 2005, Bakir had deregistered both Schapelle Corby Pty Ltd and the schapellecorby.com.au website.