Convicted drug kingpin Tony Mokbel reveals his first priority after being freed on bail
The convicted drug kingpin has been allowed to taste restricted freedom for the first time in 18 years and he has revealed there are three things on his immediate to-do list.
National
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EXCLUSIVE: When Tony Mokbel calls from prison he sounds affable.
He always does – until he doesn’t.
For the first time in a long time, Mokbel has a future outside prison walls.
In December, Mokbel was ebullient, even though he was talking from Barwon Prison’s Acacia Unit, the bleak jail within a jail.
But the ultimate gambler was hopeful.
He was going to push every legal avenue, even if it was a long shot.
“Between you and me I’m gonna ask them, let’s go for bail,” Mokbel said.
“Can you imagine me going for bail? Wow”.
“They could suspend my sentence.....I don’t know what they’re going to say, I really don’t.
“I think they’re going to say no.
“But just wait. I think I’m going to get it expedited.
“But can you imagine me getting bail? Oh my god …”
On Friday morning, God seemed to be on Mokbel’s side.
So were three justices of Victoria’s Appeal Court who ruled in favour of his bail application, allowing Mokbel to taste restricted freedom for the first time in 18 years.
Mokbel was clear on the first thing he wanted if he was freed – to see his kids and to visit the gravesite of his mother.
The 59-year-old also could not attend the funeral of his brother, Milad, who succumbed to motor neurone disease in 2020, seven years after their mother’s death.
Apart from that, he said: “I’ve got no idea”.
Mokbel is the reason there was a Lawyer X scandal.
It was Mokbel whom lawyer-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo wanted to be rid of.
Gobbo had been his go-to lawyer, and friend, ever since Valentine’s Day, 2002, when she began acting for him.
After all, she had got him out of jail on bail.
Victoria Police’s anti-gangland Purana task force – set up to end Melbourne’s Gangland War which raged from 1999 until 2006 – wanted him in prison just as badly.
By recruiting Gobbo to be human source 3838, together they would create the biggest legal scandal in Australia’s history.
“What they’ve done here is contaminate the whole system,” Mokbel said, his voice taking a more serious tone.
Mokbel was buoyed by the findings of NSW Justice Elizabeth Fullerton, who last year labelled the conduct of police who used Gobbo to sting the Mokbel cartel as a “joint criminal enterprise”.
The Herald Sun, which broke the Lawyer X scandal, revealed in 2018 that not only did Mokbel blame Gobbo for jailing him, but for telling him to flee his trial.
Mokbel’s 15-months on the run is what most people know him for.
In March, 2006, Gobbo was representing Mokbel as he stood trial on charges of importing cocaine from Mexico.
As the trial neared its end, Mokbel fled to Bonnie Doon, where he impregnated his girlfriend Danielle McGuire, was driven across the Nullabor as a mute named Wes, and boarded a yacht he bought called the Edwena off the Western Australian coastline.
From there, a hired crew sailed him to Greece.
Back home, his sister-in-law Renate was taken to court over the $1m surety she posted for him and given a jail term because she could not pay.
It was a one-time professional musician who had become a member of Mokbel’s “Company” that led police to him in Athens.
The musician knew a cop from one of his bands, who introduced him to Taskforce Purana.
In June, 2007, Mokbel was tracked to a cafe in the wealthy seaside suburb of Glyfada.
His arrest ended 15-months on the run and Australia’s biggest manhunt.
When a Greek police officer arrested him, Mokbel was wearing an ill-fitting wig and carrying a doctored Australian passport in the name of Stephen Papas.
It was his last day of freedom.
Across Victoria, 120 police officers raided 22 properties in the wake of his capture.
Soon afterwards, from a cell in Athens, Mokbel called Gobbo and asked her to fly to Greece to help him.
Instead, in their subsequent phone conversations about the extradition process and his strategy, Gobbo gave him legal advice and passed the information on to police.
It took almost a year to extradite Mokbel to Australia, arriving at Melbourne Airport aboard a Gulfstream jet – which cost the taxpayer $450,000 to hire – in May, 2008.
Upon his return he was facing murder charges for the gangland killings of Michael Marshall in 2003, and Lewis Moran in 2004 on top of massive drug trafficking charges.
Mokbel would say himself that although he was a drug dealer, he was no killer.
He was acquitted of the Moran slaying and prosecutors withdrew the Marshall murder charge.
But the drug charges laid against him were overwhelming.
It was incredible police work. Mokbel’s “Company” had an estimated turnover of $400m.
It was a meteoric rise since his days running a pizza parlour in the early 1990s.
Mokbel, born in Kuwait in 1965, moved to Australia with his Lebanese Christian family in 1972, unable to speak English.
His father, Sajih, worked at the Ford factory.
He walked his mother, Lora, to her job at a meat factory where she worked each morning.
Mokbel was a classroom clown, until dropping out of school aged 15, the year his father died of a heart attack.
Mokbel would state that it left him “dirty on the world”.
His first arrest came three years later over a street brawl, resulting in a fine.
By 21, Mokbel had bought into a restaurant with one of his brothers, and soon with his then wife, Carmel, began his own family.
He served his first stint in jail in 1992, aged 27, for drug offending.
Mokbel then took the underworld by surprise.
He built a drug empire to fuel Melbourne’s growing amphetamine market, employing drug cooks, building clandestine drug labs, including one that exploded, and expanding into massive drug importations with other underworld players such as Rob Karam.
Carl Williams was another gangland player Mokbel would, for a time, join forces.
With huge cash flows came audacious business ventures, including a dream to build a monstrous apartment complex north of Melbourne in the municipality or Moreland.
Mokbel’s “Company” had acquired more than 50 properties, including farms, race horses, a majority stake in Pillar of Hercules, a pub called the Red Lion, jetskis, restaurants, a clothing line, the Brunswick Market and more than 30 cars, including his beloved red Ferrari.
Fat Tony, who is now Thin Tony, will never be as wealthy again.
But his future, if he wins his appeal, could once again make him richer than most.
The Lawyer X fiasco has resulted in Victoria Police settling with at least two of them men it ensnared.
One of them, Faruk Orman, was jailed for murder.
The quashing of his conviction netted him close to $1m.
He is now suing Gobbo, who like all lawyers, had professional insurance.
If Mokbel succeeds in his appeal – likely to be heard later this year – he is a certainty to sue the state and Gobbo.
Given his love of the punt, he might even attempt to get some of his assets back, including his toupee that has pride of place in the Victoria Police museum.
But he also needs Victoria’s Appeal Court to quash his massive drug trafficking convictions.
In 2011, Mokbel pleaded guilty to three police drug investigations into him between 2005 and 2007 – known as Quills, Orbital and Magnum.
Mokbel then changed his mind about pleading guilty and appealed.
It was dismissed.
In hindsight, it probably should not have been.
At the time of the appeal, Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions, John Champion, had been told by Victoria Police that Gobbo was a snitch against Mokbel.
It should have been disclosed to Mokbel, and members of his family and crew who were also ensnared.
It remained a secret, however, until the Herald Sun exposed the story in March, 2014.
Now, more than a decade later, Mokbel will soon learn his fate.
The Appeal Court, to be presided over by three justices later this year to rule on whether his case was a miscarriage of justice, will have three options.
First, it can quash his convictions and set aside his 26-year jail sentence.
Then again, the justices could quash Mokbel’s convictions and order a retrial on some or all of his charges.
Lastly, Mokbel might be told to go away and serve his remaining time behind bars.
But so far, he’s been on the winning side as his appeal winds through the courts.
Mokbel’s 2006 cocaine rap – the one from which he absconded the trial – has already been quashed and years taken off his overall sentence.
He has six years to go before he is eligible for parole.
But six years might be too long.
Mokbel has suffered heart attacks and was the victim of a brutal prison yard attack in February, 2019, during which he was stabbed, punched and stomped on which left him with a brain injury.
On the outside, some of his former allies and enemies are no longer threats.
Mokbel was no friend of Mick Gatto, who legend had it set him up to be ambushed by a couple of Perth bikies.
But any bad-blood is likely long gone.
Despite being in prison for almost two decades, Mokbel has maintained a number of his old crew.
An associate, Zlate “Steve” Cvetanovski, stays in contact.
He was also released from prison over the Lawyer X fiasco.
Key Mokbel man Shane Bugeja is another of many who stuck by him.
Others in his orbit now include jailed drug lord and killer George Marrogi, who he was in Acacia alongside.
Then there are those we don’t know, such as the two men in the orange Lamborghini at court last Wednesday.
Even though $55m in assets were stripped from Mokbel, he still manages to pay the bills.
For a while in this appeal it was run at his own expense.
One of his eminent barristers was Bret Walker, regarded as the best lawyer in the country money can hire.
And he wasn’t the only one.
The cash did run dry and he was granted Legal Aid funding a couple of years ago.
For the detectives, from both federal and state police, seeing Mokbel free was galling.
“This is going to be the next big chapter of the Lawyer X scandal … that’s what I believe,’’ Mokbel said last year in anticipation of his appeal.
“I’m in extremely good spirits.
“I’ve got no idea (when I’ll get out). I’ll be glad to see the kids and family.”
That time is now.
Life has shifted during his time in jail. Late nights out with his new girlfriend won’t be an option due to the GPS ankle bracelet he wears that pinpoints him every 90 seconds within two meters of his location.
Still, his sister, Gawy Saad, who has given the court an $1 million surety to secure his release, might want to keep an eye on him.
Anthony Dowsley won the Gold Walkley for his Lawyer X investigation which revealed Melbourne criminal lawyer Nicola Gobbo was a police informer.
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