Corby The Australian 12 February 2007

FILED FOR WEB AND THEN PULLED FOR LEGAL REASONS 12 FEB 2007

John Stapleton

Stephen Fitzpatrick

THE CORBY family were by no means the innocents they pretended to be during the Indonesian trials of Schapelle Corby, according to explosive revelations by a former close family friend Jodi Power.

The woman has claimed that Schapelle's sister Mercedes had directly asked her whether she would be interested in transporting drugs to Bali and had admitted to her she had imported drugs to Indonesia on a number of occasions.

She also claimed that at one time Mercedes asked her to travel to the Corby family farm to help her water marijuana plants at a time when Mercedes'  father Michael Corby was ill. She also said she had seen vacuum filled packs of marijuana at the Corby family home which looked exactly like the vacuum pack Schapelle was caught with.

Ms Powers said she was saddened Schapelle is in jail but ``with everything that I now and the lies that have been told points towards she knew what she was doing, she was aware of the consequences.''

She dismissed claims made by various members of the Corby family that they had never smoked marijuana as lies.

The revelations are contained in a program by Channel Seven's Today Tonight titled ``Finally, the Truth About Schapelle'' with journalist Bryan Seymour.

Photographs provided to the program appear to show Mercedes Corby smoking marijuana.

The program describes Ms Power as a close family friend, one of the inner-sanctum who grew up in close contact with Schapelle and her sister Mercedes.

Television footage shows Ms Power sitting through the prolonged Indonesian trials lending support to the Corby family. But Ms Power had a falling out with Mercedes last year, leading, she says, to her spilling the beans on the family.

She says Mercedes and her were once best friends, ``but she's hurt too many people now... And lied about too many people. Lied full stop, so many lies.''

Ms Power was subjected to a lie detector test by Today Tonight. While she failed the test the first time it was conducted, she passed when, at her insistance, she sat it again. Former police officer Steve van Aparen, who conducted the tests, said he was convinced Ms Power was telling the truth about the Corby family.

Ms Power said that Mercedes had told her she had smuggled drugs into Bali. ``She said she compressed it or made it smaller, I don't remember her words exactly, and put it inside her,'' she claims.

She also said the Corby family had a contact in the Balinese customs service but the man was not working the day Schapelle was arrested.

When asked to reconcile the statements that Mercedes Corby made that neither she or her family had anything to do with drugs Ms Powers says: ``She's a liar, she's lied constantly throughout everything.''

She said she had seen Mercedes selling drugs at her house. ``I've seen people come in, pay the money and then leave again,'' she said.

An emotional Ms Power said Mercedes would hate her for spilling the beans but she felt ``cleansed, I feel like I've got if off my chest''.

Ms Power said she would use the money she was being paid by Today Tonight to pay back the people who had donated money to the Help Free Schapelle Incorporated Fund that she established after returning from Bali.

Kathryn Bonella, the 60 Minutes reporter who wrote Schappelle Corby's autobiography 'My Story', described the Today Tonight story as ``disgusting journalism''

``They did this lie detector test and it's not even clear which questions she's answering when you see it,'' she said. ``You can't tell which questions she's passed. It's been carefully manipulated.''

While Today Tonight claimed that they had been unable to contact Mercedes Corby, Ms Bonella said Mercedes had been trying for the past six weeks to get a right of reply to this program.

``It was only last Thursday -- two working days before the program went to air -- that the producers from Today Tonight tried to get in touch with her,'' she said. ``It's true that she had been out of contact for the past couple of  days because she's just returned to Bali after having her third child.

``She was pleading with them to give her a right of reply. She wanted a right of reply to this hatchet job, and now she's suing Jodi -- who's a mentally unstable woman -- and she's had a lawyer send a letter to the program threatening legal action unless they gave her the right of reply.''

A senior source in Bali's drugs investigation unit tonight urged Australian authorities to share what information they had on the claims.

``If we had request of that sort, I would think we would respond immediately,'' the police source said.

``If this is true, if there are new developments, we ask the Australian police to contact the Indonesian police -- in particular the Bali police -- in order to conduct a cooperative investigation,'' the source said.

The source expressed great interest in the allegations, saying that Indonesian police had never suspected the older Corby of involvement in drugs smuggling.

``She never had a record, so she was never suspected or investigated on this,'' the source said last night.

Bali police spokesman, Senior Commissioner Antonius Reniban, said his force could do nothing on the new claims unless they were forwarded to Indonesian authorities.

``We've already investigated all the evidence in this case,'' Senior Commissioner Reniban said. ``We've been through the whole process and she has been convicted. If there are new findings, they should be forwarded to the Supreme Court.''

Corby's lawyer Erwin Siregar last night described Power's claim as ``absolute rubbish'' and said ``if she's  prepared to make allegations of this sort, she needs to present the evidence''.

When told that Power's claims included photographic evidence of Mercedes Corby smoking marijuana, the usually garrulous Siregar was silent for a moment, then said: ``If it can be proved, it needs to be dealt with through legal process. If it can't be proved under the law, that makes it rubbish''.