Tony Mokbel ordered to face retrial after Lawyer X conviction quashed

Drug baron Tony Mokbel has been ordered to face a retrial following the sensational quashing of his cocaine conviction, but the retrial likely won’t happen.

Drug baron Tony Mokbel has been ordered to face a retrial following the sensational quashing of his cocaine importation conviction due to the Lawyer X scandal.

However, a fresh trial will not be called after the Commonwealth’s top prosecutor agreed they would not run one.

The Court of Appeal handed down its judgment on Friday morning on the question of whether Mokbel should be acquitted or face retrial after his 12 year sentence for importing 2.9kg of cocaine from Mexico in 2006 was set aside in December last year.

Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Sarah McNaughton, SC, had conceded the conviction could not stand after it was revealed Mokbel was being represented by snitching lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, at the same time she was working as a secret police informant.

The court heard Ms McNaughton wanted a retrial ordered just for the record, despite acknowledging Mokbel had already served the entirety of his jail sentence on that charge and could not be punished further.

Ms McNuaghton SC and Rowena Orr QC for the state DPP argued against acquitting the gangland drug lord, saying it sent the wrong message.

Mokbel has been ordered to face a retrial that will likely never happen.

Court of Appeal Justices David Beach and Justice Robert Osborn agreed and found the fact there will be no retrial “does not make an order for due process futile”.

“Notions of practical futility cannot be engaged so as to require this Court to make an order that it considers is not appropriate on the authorities and in all the circumstances,” Justice Beach and Osborn said.

Justice Chris Maxwell however agreed with Mokbel’s legal team that an acquittal was the right course, but said there was still sufficient evidence to support the conviction.

“The most significant consideration, in my view, is that the appellant has already served the entirety of the 12 year head sentence imposed on him for the importation offence.”

“An order for retrial is not, therefore, necessary to vindicate the objectives of the criminal law.”

“The judgment of acquittal gives formal expression to the appellate court’s conclusion that there should be no retrial,” Justice Maxwell said.

The gangland bigwig was sentenced in absentia to a minimum of nine years’ jail after he infamously fled overseas while on bail during the 2006 trial, sparking Australia’s biggest international manhunt.

He was later tracked down and arrested in an Athens cafe in 2007 while wearing a wig as a disguise, and extradited from Greece in 2008.

Mokbel is still fighting multiple other drug trafficking convictions, to which he pleaded guilty in 2012.

He is serving a minimum of 22 years, and his earliest ­release date is still 2033.