Salim Mehajer arrives at Central Local Court in November. Credit:AAP He blamed the crash on a "car admirer" who ran out to take a snap of his luxury wheels. "I get a lot of attention in that car, as you can understand," he said at the time. Months later, in September 2012, Mehajer was elected to Auburn Council – a victory now at the centre of an electoral fraud trial – and the Local Court convicted him in October of negligent driving. The conviction was overturned on appeal to the District Court – but Mehajer's car troubles appeared to kick up a gear in 2017.

Illustration: John Shakespeare Here are the highlights of Mehajer's horror year, on and off the road. The taxi trials Salim Mehajer leaves Darling Harbour police station after allegedly assaulting a taxi driver. Credit:Ben Rushton Pundits pondered whether Mehajer would have been better off getting an Uber after a series of unfortunate incidents vis-a-vis taxis.

The former councillor was handcuffed and frisked by police in Ibiza in the weeks before Christmas 2016 after an altercation with a Spanish taxi driver. No charges were laid. Back on home soil, Mehajer was charged with assaulting a cabbie outside The Star casino in the early hours of April 2 by throwing an eftpos machine at the driver's face. Mehajer was charged with a second assault later that day as he was being whisked away from Sydney City police station on Day Street in a Porsche, after a taxi driver aborted the fare. Channel Seven journalist Laura Banks was caught between the car door and the Porsche as Mehajer attempted to flee a media scrum outside the police station. He was charged with assaulting Banks. Driven to distraction

Mehajer was involved in a car accident in October. Credit:ABC News If things were subpar in the passenger seat, Mehajer fared no better behind the wheel. He was due to face two back-to-back assault trials over the April incidents, starting on October 16, when he was allegedly involved in a car crash in his white Mercedes SUV in Delhi Street, Lidcombe. The trials were delayed until next year. A spokesman for Mehajer told Fairfax Media any suggestion the crash was staged was "ludicrous", "evil" and "irrational". NSW Police subsequently raided Mehajer's luxury Lidcombe home in connection with an "ongoing investigation". It is believed to be related to the car crash.

Courtroom drama The staircase inside Mehajer's mansion in Lidcombe. Mehajer's courtroom dramas were legion in 2017 and he faced a string of civil and criminal trials. After months maintaining his innocence he pleaded guilty in November to failing to disclose his political donations by the September deadline last year, when he was still deputy mayor of Auburn. He was fined $3300 and ordered to pay the prosecution's legal costs, which exceeded the fine.

The former councillor is still at the centre of a long-running electoral fraud trial and has pleaded not guilty to more than 100 offences related to his alleged rigging of the 2012 Auburn Council election. His sister Fatima, who also stood for election but missed out on a spot, was to stand trial alongside him but pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial to 77 counts of giving false or misleading information to the Australian Electoral Commission. The offences attract a potential prison sentence. Mehajer was also ordered to cough up almost $700,000 plus legal costs after the District Court found he failed to pay for elaborate stonework at his palatial home in Lidcombe, dubbed a "marble palace" by Judge Judith Gibson. To cap it off, the property developer boasts the distinction of being involved in one of the shortest Court of Appeal hearings in history.

In August Justice Anthony Meagher cut short an appeal by Mehajer against a Supreme Court ruling that administrators were validly appointed to two of his financially ailing companies by asking bluntly: "What are we doing here?" Mehajer's lawyer conceded the appeal could not succeed and the three-judge bench dismissed the appeal in minutes. Outside the courtroom, the colourful developer had the odd tussle with his own lawyers. Two of Mehajer's solicitors asked the court for permission to stop acting for him in unrelated cases over financial disputes. In June one lawyer was forced to continue acting for him, despite expressing fears he would not be paid, after the Supreme Court found he made the application to cease acting for Mehajer too close to the hearing date. The media glare

Media surround Salim Mehajer outside court in April. Credit:Daniel Munoz Where he goes, the media hounds follow. The social media-savvy Mehajer appears at times to revel in the limelight but the negative publicity clearly hit a nerve in October. Mehajer took the unusual step of issuing a 2am press release – via his solicitor sister Zenah Osman – on October 28, threatening to launch "Australia's Largest Case of Defamation" against a host of media outlets. "I let the media throw in all the punches for the past 20 months and watched my case build just like a business deal," Mehajer said in the letter, addressed to Fairfax Media and styled an "exclusive story". "I think now though, it has reached its peak and its [sic] time I commenced legal proceedings. All proceeds will be donated to charity."

Damages were calculated at $103 million, far in excess of Rebel Wilson's historic $4.56 million defamation damages payout earlier this year. Fairfax Media was told the claim would be filed on November 2. It was not. The business plans Salim Mehajer's 2015 wedding landed him in the spotlight. It was a lavish wedding and an elaborate pre-ceremony video that catapulted Mehajer into the national spotlight in August 2015 – before the relationship soured and police applied for an apprehended violence order to protect his estranged wife, Aysha, in July 2016.

Undeterred, Mehajer exhibited the kind of bullishness for which he is famous by announcing a new wedding and events planning business in October this year. A small roadblock emerged in November when the sole director of his wedding venture, Ahmed Jaghbir, was charged over his alleged role in the murder of bikie associate and underworld figure Kemel "Blackie" Barakat in March. Less than a fortnight later, the wedding preparations of Mehajer's sister Aisha and her groom Sam Sayour – the nephew of nightclub boss John Ibrahim – were interrupted, but not halted, by the shooting of Ibrahim's bodyguard Semi "Tongan Sam" Ngata. The social media ban Salim Mehajer arrives at Burwood Local Court in November. Credit:Nick Moir

It was, perhaps, the most Mehajer of moments. Hours after he was arrested in the early hours of November 20 for dangerous driving and breaching an AVO by allegedly stalking his estranged wife, Aysha, his lawyer sought bail for Mehajer and promised the court his client would stay off Instagram. The social media account, which boasts 194,000 followers, features hundreds of photos of Mehajer posing in luxury cars and sporting designer jewellery and accessories. Shortly before his arrest, Mehajer had published a cryptic post on Instagram that included a photo of himself and Aysha along with a claim his account had been hacked. The post was deleted by the time he was conveyed to Burwood Local Court in a police van, dressed in a hoodie and thongs. Magistrate Joy Boulos said she would impose "very stringent" bail conditions on the 31-year-old, which would ensure he was kept "virtually under house arrest" at a residence in Vaucluse.

He was also ordered not to contact his estranged wife via Instagram and to stay out of her suburb of Kingsgrove. The unrelated dangerous driving charge involved a collision between his white Audi and a Toyota Corolla. "The crash didn't wake me, he did," one local resident said of the profanities allegedly hurled by Mehajer after the crash. The good burghers of Vaucluse may be in for quite a summer.