Lawyer X gave daily updates to police on Tony Mokbel’s next legal strategies as he fought drugs charges
When Tony Mokbel was caught bringing in cocaine from Mexico he knew the prosecution case was strong. The scandal now is that the police knew that he knew because he was being betrayed by one of the few people he thought he could trust.
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Lawyer X and her senior counsel, Con Heliotis QC, made a formidable team.
She filleted piles of legal reports with such eagle-eyed zeal that observers wondered when she slept.
Heliotis blazed as the “Golden Greek”. His sharpness of mind and stage presence placed him among the best.
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Their client, Tony Mokbel, relied on formidable legal teams. They helped forge the image of a drug baron known as “Teflon Tony” who smirked off convictions, even when a drug lab blew up in a backyard next to a property of his.
He always sought to make deals, but legal manoeuvring would not spare him jail this time. Mokbel had been caught bringing in cocaine from Mexico. The absurdity, given the grandiosity of his schemes, was the relatively small amount — three kilograms.
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Mokbel knew the prosecution case was strong. The scandal now is that the police knew that he knew it.
The police got daily updates on Mokbel’s next legal strategies because he was being betrayed by one of the few people he thought he could trust.
His legal privilege, an enshrined right for the accused that traces back centuries, was tossed aside for The Queen v Antonios Sajih Mokbel.
It’s another prime example of the Lawyer X ethical no-man’s land that has no known precedents in Australia.
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The Supreme Court has found that Lawyer X’s behaviour during Mokbel’s trial might lead to him challenging his convictions “because he did not have independent counsel”.
Heliotis didn’t know about Lawyer X’s deceptions then. No one did, apart from the participants.
A few observers suspected, such as underworld kingpin Carl Williams, who rightly called out her conflicts with clients. He also wondered why Lawyer X kept visiting him in prison and asking odd questions.
The Mokbel example in the scandal is particularly perplexing, given his recent claim that in March 2006 Lawyer X told him to “f--- off” overseas — because he was about to be charged with murder.
She knew the risks of exposure. The trial judge, Justice Bill Gillard, pointed them out after Mokbel’s lawyers sought detail on informers and police officers.
In his judgment several weeks after Lawyer X was registered, for the third time, as Informer 3838, Justice Gillard said informers’ identities could be disclosed if their identity helped show a defendant’s innocence.
The peril couldn’t be higher. When she agreed to inform in 2005, Lawyer X had told police: “If anyone finds out about this, I will be murdered.”
Regardless, in March 2006, a few weeks before the trial ended, Lawyer X was divulging Mokbel’s hopes of acquittal through a “clever no-case submission” to police.
Mokbel’s capture has always been credited with the information provided by Informer 3030, who gave evidence in court and received most of a $1 million reward. His assistance was described by the Supreme Court’s Justice Betty King as “invaluable”.
But Mokbel’s belief that Lawyer X told police his whereabouts when he was on the run stands to muddle the neat narrative. After his capture, Lawyer X and Mokbel spoke on the phone in calls she reported back to police.
Lawyer X and Mokbel’s acquaintance traces back to the turn of the millennium, when she worked for lawyer Alex Lewenberg, who fretted that she had “crossed the line”.
Lawyer X has cited Mokbel as her motivation for police informing, referring to getting the “Mokbel monkey” off her back. It is unknown when she began informing on Mokbel.
“One of the many ironies of all this is I have so many conflicts with the bloke …” she told her police handlers in 2007. “They’ll stay hidden.”
Lawyer X was partly right. Her ethical blurs did stay secret — until the Herald Sun started to reveal them in 2014.