How $1800 legal bill could set Mokbel free

Gangland boss Tony Mokbel’s potential freedom hangs on one small legal bill — and it could be the best small change the drug kingpin has ever spent.

An $1800 legal bill could free underworld figure Tony Mokbel from prison.

Gangland boss Tony Mokbel’s freedom depends on an $1800 legal bill.

For Mokbel, it might be the best small change he ever spent.

The fee was for some legal advice in June, 2007, following his capture in Greece after almost 15 months on the run.

Among his first calls was one to lawyer Nicola Gobbo, aka Lawyer X.

What Mokbel did not know was that Gobbo was registered police informer 3838 and was passing on his legal strategies to the police she had helped to lock up some of his cartel.

Mokbel — who will soon begin a court battle for freedom over the Lawyer X scandal — was the target of operation Posse, which operated on the basis his relationship with the Williamses went back further than many believe.

The key police planning documents reveal the inner workings of his cartel, how police were to fight the drug lord and the critical importance of taking him down.

Gobbo was Operation Posse’s key asset in destroying Mokbel by isolating him.

But her conduct now stands as the key to opening his cell door.

Tony Mokbel with his legal team Nicola Gobbo and Con Heliotis QC outside court.

Mokbel is arguing that by passing on information he gave her under privilege as his lawyer he was unlawfully extradited from Greece to Melbourne (en route to Barwon Prison) in May, 2008.

Gobbo’s rol, from September 2005 onwards, was to feed back information on who was part of the Mokbel cartel, their car registrations, phone numbers and any gossip she heard.

Gobbo even sent herself text messages from phones left on restaurant tables where she dined with the cartel.

But after Mokbel fled in the middle of a Supreme Court trial in March 2006, during which she was acting as his junior barrister, Gobbo could only feed back information she gleaned from his associates.

Some of those tip-offs were used in the manhunt for Mokbel leading to a claim for part of a $1m reward after federal police cornered him in a beachside Athens cafe, where they arrested him.

The arrest of the notorious figure, on June 5, 2007, ended his almost 15 months on the run.

During his time as a fugitive, Mokbel spent time in Bonnie Doon in regional Victoria before meeting a 17.3m yacht, the Edwena, off the coast of Western Australia.

Mokbel was shockingly seasick during the trip and spent a substantial part of the trip hunched over a special toilet he had installed below deck while listening to a best-of compilation of soul singer Barry White.

A small crew sailed Mokbel to Greece in style.

A police contingent would return him to Melbourne in a luxury Lear Jet, paid for by the taxpayer.

Mokbel with his lawyer, Nicola Gobbo.

When he arrived he faced two charges of murder and a wide range of commercial drug-offending offences.

Out of all the criminal clients Gobbo double-crossed during her time playing the dual role of lawyer and police informer, Mokbel is positioned as the most significant.

His appeal against convictions relies most heavily on two significant informers — Gobbo herself and the drug cook she “rolled’’ for Operation Posse, a drug cook known by the pseudonym “Mr Cooper’’.

But it will all amount to just a fraction of time off his “global’’ sentence if he cannot successfully argue his extradition from Greece was unlawful.

His submission to the Lawyer X royal commission states:

“In or about June 2007, Gobbo was retained by Mr Mokbel to provide legal advice and assistance in his attempts to resist extradition from the Hellenic Republic. At material times during the period between that engagement and the extradition of Mr Mokbel to Australia in May 2008, Gobbo actively fulfilled both of her dual roles under the agreement. In doing so, she provided confidential information obtained from Mr Mokbel to Vicpol (Victoria Police) concerning his instructions and tactics in opposing the extradition and actively assisted Vicpol in its support of the extradition process. For their part, Vicpol knowingly utilised Gobbo’s information and assistance materially to enhance its capacity to support the extradition and to undermine Mr Mokbel’s case in opposition.’’

In 2020 Mokbel had the first of his convictions quashed.

Ironically, it was the conviction he copped in absentia after fleeing the trial in 2006.

But he has three more major drug convictions to overcome.