By David Estcourt
Turncoat barrister Nicola Gobbo encouraged Antonios “Tony” Mokbel to flee the country to avoid prosecution over three murder charges, the former drug kingpin has claimed in court in his first public appearance in more than a decade.
Mokbel, one of the most prominent and recognisable figures in Melbourne’s infamous underworld war of the early to mid-2000s, is appealing his conviction for drug-trafficking offences, arguing that as a supergrass police informant, Gobbo contaminated the case.
Tony Mokbel in a prison van after his court appearance on Tuesday.Credit: Jason South
Taking the witness box on Tuesday morning in the Victorian Supreme Court, an energetic Mokbel stood as he gave evidence. He said that while he was on trial for another case, Gobbo – his former lawyer – told him that he was facing several murder charges and should consider fleeing.
“[Gobbo] told me that I’m going to be charged with three murders and I should seriously think about absconding,” he told the court.
He also claimed that the reason Gobbo knew about the pending murder charges was because she had been told by a member of the Purana taskforce, the infamous gangland-busting police unit that recruited her as an informant.
“I said, ‘Why is that, how do you know that?’” Mokbel said. “She said she had a source from Purana that had told her that information.
A court sketch of Tony Mokbel, who appeared in court for his appeal trial on Tuesday.Credit: Nine News
“[She said] ‘If you get found guilty, they’re going to give you life’.”
After Mokbel fled to Greece in 2006, he was charged with commissioning two murders: the 2003 slaying of drug dealer and hot dog vendor Michael Marshall and the 2004 execution of gangland rival Lewis Moran.
After his capture and 2008 return to Australia, police dropped the Marshall charge and Mokbel was found not guilty of Moran’s murder.
Mokbel said on Tuesday that while he was fighting extradition from Greece to Australia throughout 2007, he asked Gobbo to get a statement from crime boss Carl Williams, who had pleaded guilty to organising murders in Melbourne’s underworld war and told now-retired Justice Betty King that Mokbel wasn’t involved in hits on Moran or Marshall.
Nicola Gobbo (left) with Tony Mokbel outside court in 2004. She and Con Heliotis, QC (right), were representing the crime boss at the time.Credit: Nine News
Mokbel was, however, found guilty in 2006 for importing a commercial quantity of cocaine from Mexico. But the Court of Appeal in 2020 quashed that conviction after Gobbo was ousted as a police informer amid the Lawyer X scandal fallout.
Gobbo is not expected to be called as a witness in the trial. She has rarely been seen in public since the Lawyer X scandal broke and provided evidence to the 2020 Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants from an undisclosed location.
Mokbel, one of the few surviving figures of the Melbourne gangland war, said Gobbo was “an extremely hardworking barrister compared to others”.
Wearing a black pinstripe suit and a tie, the scars of an assault visible on his skull, Mokbel spoke of his shock that someone he trusted was working “both sides of the fence”. He told the court that he would never have hired Gobbo again if he knew she was informing to police.
“If she spoke to Victoria Police, full stop, I wouldn’t have called her back,” he said. “You don’t have a person who’s giving you legal advice playing both sides of the fence.
“It’s quite simple.”
Asked by his barrister, Julie Condon, KC, whether he suspected that Gobbo was a “dog”, Mokbel said he never believed it.
“I trusted her so much. I couldn’t believe she’d do it,” he said.
Tony Mokbel wearing a wig at the time of his arrest in Greece in 2007.
“When you spend a bit of time with her, you’d think she was the staunchest person, 10 times more staunch than any criminal out there.
“You would have never picked her to be on the other side of the fence … I’m still shocked.”
Mokbel said Gobbo eagerly sought to represent him when police first charged him in the early 2000s, asking to be put on his case and promising to work hard on his behalf.
“She asked me if she could become a junior [barrister], that she’d work hard, it’s a high-profile case, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll give you a go’,” he told the court. “She was constantly telling me to ring her, constantly coming to visit me … she put me on a pedestal, which was good for me, it was a big case.”
Mokbel said that at one stage, Williams organised a burner phone for him, which he used to call Gobbo from inside prison.
Mokbel has spent recent years recovering from the traumatic brain injury he suffered when attacked by two inmates at Barwon Prison in late 2019. He spent 24 days in a coma after the attack and was left with cognitive issues affecting his memory, planning, organisation and reasoning skills.
Mokbel was famously arrested as a fugitive in Greece in 2007 after fleeing while on trial and was later identified as the mastermind of a drug cartel known as The Company.
In 2006, he was found guilty of what became known as the “Plutonium” charge, for importing a commercial quantity of cocaine from Mexico.
‘I trusted her so much. I couldn’t believe she’d do it … When you spend a bit of time with her you’d think she was the staunchest person, 10 times more staunch than any criminal out there.’
Tony Mokbel on Nicola Gobbo’s informing to police
Mokbel told the court that his barrister in the Plutonium charge, Peter Faris, QC, suggested he plead guilty shortly before his trial was about to begin. He said he reluctantly agreed to do so, but would have preferred to fight the charges.
Following the Plutonium conviction, Mokbel pleaded guilty to three counts of drug trafficking offences – referred to as the Quills charge, Magnum charge and Orbital charge – and was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison in July 2012.
Mokbel served the full sentence on the Plutonium conviction before he appealed, the appeals court quashed it and Commonwealth prosecutors discontinued the offence. Prosecutors conceded that due to Gobbo’s involvement, Mokbel had suffered a serious miscarriage of justice.
The appeals court then reduced the sentence on the Quills, Magnum and Orbital charges after Mokbel argued he had served five years in prison for a crime he was no longer convicted of.
All three convictions were subjected to scrutiny by the royal commission, which found they were potentially contaminated as a result of misconduct by Gobbo and Victoria Police.
He is the third person to have a conviction quashed because of the misconduct of Gobbo and Victoria Police’s Purana taskforce, whose exploits formed the basis for the Underbelly TV series.
Mokbel is eligible for parole in 2031. His appeal trial continues.
John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.