Former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has been released from a Sydney police station after being arrested following an altercation with a taxi driver.
Police say the 30-year-old was arrested in Darlinghurst about 5am on Sunday after he allegedly assaulted the 38-year-old taxi driver outside The Star casino.
Mehajer also allegedy stole the driver’s Eftpos machine and mobile phone.
The businessman was later charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and larceny, but his release from custody was far from smooth.
A taxi driver he had ordered to pick him up from the police station refused to drive him away.
“I don’t know anything about the story, they asked me to come here – I’m not going to drive them anymore,” the driver says in Seven News footage of the incident.
The driver then requested police remove Mehajer from the car, but he refused and ignored an officer’s requests while holding a mobile phone to his ear.
“You’re welcome to wait in the station,” the officer said. “I can’t have you sitting in this cab in this laneway.”
Mehajer refused to move, arguing the driver had a “duty of care”.
At one point during the awkward stand-off, the officer was forced to unlock the back door through the open driver’s window. Mehajer later got in the driver’s seat of a waiting car and invited a female journalist in the back seat.
“Jump in, I’ll have a little chat to you,” he said.
Mehajer shot to national attention with his August 2015 wedding in a suburban Sydney street which involved four helicopters and a cavalcade of sports cars.
In July 2016 Mehajer was ordered not to approach or contact his wife under the terms of a provisional apprehended violence order.
In August 2016 Mehajer, who also worked as a property developer, was banned from managing corporations for three years, with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal upholding a ban by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for his “cavalier approach”.
The AAT ruling said there was a “need for such a disqualification in the public interest as a means of protecting others from his incompetence”.
Mehajer is banned from managing corporations until 5 November 2018 after Asic found his “inability to manage corporations to the standard expected of him” led to SM Property Development and SM Engineering and Constructions failing, owing $886,701 and $159,9026 respectively to the tax office.
Auburn Council was sacked by the New South Wales state government in February 2016 following allegations of improper conduct.
Mehajer will appear at Downing Centre Local Court on April 26.
