Tony Mokbel prepares for bold attempt to have him released from prison in 2020
Infamous criminal Tony Mokbel and his legal team are set to fight for his freedom in the Supreme Court, with the hope the one-time fugitive could walk free in February.
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Drug baron Tony Mokbel will make a bold attempt to be freed from prison early in the new year, due to the Lawyer X scandal.
The Herald Sun can reveal Mokbel’s legal team made enquiries with the Supreme Court this month about gaining a bail hearing, as the one-time fugitive hoped to be released before Christmas.
It is understood Mokbel’s team is now preparing documents, including medical reports, in order to seek bail in February, while he fights for an appeal hearing over his numerous drug convictions.
Victoria Police’s use of barrister Nicola Gobbo as a secret informer against Mokbel, when he was her client, will be pivotal to his extraordinary case.
It can be revealed the force has handed over a tranche of confidential documents to Mokbel, as part of a “disclosure’’ process, though sections are blacked-out.
Gobbo told her police handlers that the key reason she returned to informing in 2005 — in what was her third and most prolific stint — was to get the “Mokbel monkey” off her back.
Former Victoria Police chief commissioner Simon Overland has acknowledged that Gobbo was crucial in dismantling Mokbel’s drug empire.
And Overland has stated she was integral to his capture in the Athens suburb Glyfada after his infamous escape from a cocaine trial in Melbourne in 2006.
The big wig had tried to disguise himself by donning a toupee.
His arrest marked the end of a marathon global manhunt, with the drug lord initially having hidden in Bonnie Doon for months before being smuggled to Western Australia and boarding ocean-going yacht, the Edwena, to Greece.
Mokbel also had numerous phone calls with Gobbo following his June 2007 arrest, in which they discussed his legal options to avoid extradition and which she fed back to police.
The legality of his extradition to Australia is a major plank in Mokbel’s legal fight.
Information derived from the Lawyer X royal commission is also set to feature heavily in his bid for freedom, with Gobbo’s police handlers and two of Mokbel’s criminal associates having given evidence.
Many of the commission’s hearings have focused on the intelligence Gobbo, now herself in exile, provided about Mokbel.
One police information report written just prior to his extradition noted: “3838 (Gobbo’s informer number) feels that it is her responsibility to ensure Tony returns to Melbourne.’’
She even raised with officers the prospect of claiming a percentage of the $1 million reward for the fugitive after his capture.
There will be significant obstacles Mokbel faces, however, as he attempts to have his convictions overturned or, alternatively, have years lopped off his sentence.
In his 2011 plea deal, the man once dubbed “Fat Tony’’ pleaded guilty to numerous drug-trafficking offences while running “The Company’’ from both Australia and overseas.
Authorities are also expected to mount an intense fight.
Even if he is successful with his appeal, charges dropped against Mokbel in the mega plea deal could be re-invigorated.
After making the deal, Mokbel was sentenced to a maximum 30 years in jail, and a minimum 22, making him ineligible for parole until at least 2033.
In February, he was brutally attacked by other inmates at the maximum-security Barwon Prison and spent months in hospital recovering from severe head injuries.
Mokbel has been fighting for “disclosure” documents since a 2015 inquiry by anti-corruption body IBAC exposed that cases involving Gobbo — aka Lawyer X — could have been tainted.
That investigation was triggered by Herald Sun revelations in 2014 that police had recruited the barrister to inform on clients.
Mokbel formally launched his appeal to overturn his convictions in December 2017, a year before the High Court lifted gag orders over the Lawyer X scandal, prompting the government to launch the royal commission.
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Mokbel was also among 20 people to receive a letter from the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions last year stating their cases may have been tainted by their lawyer, who was a registered police informer.
The DPP had been green-lighted by the High Court to send the letters after police had fought for years to stop them going out.
The only person to be released from prison so far due to the Lawyer X scandal is Faruk Orman, who walked free from a Melbourne court in July.
Orman had served 12 years of a minimum 14-year sentence over the 2002 murder of underworld figure Victor Peirce. The conviction was quashed after it emerged that Gobbo, Orman’s lawyer, had aided his prosecution.