Tony Mokbel claims Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo told him to flee
Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel has revealed details of a crucial 2006 conversation with Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo before he fled Australia and became the nation’s most wanted man.
Police & Courts
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Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel has sensationally claimed that Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo advised him to flee because he was set to be charged with three murders, leading him to abscond to Greece.
The convicted drug trafficker, who wants to be set free from prison over the Lawyer X affair, told the Supreme Court he thought Ms Gobbo – who was informing on him to police – was “the staunchest person on Earth” and he “fully trusted her”.
During a hearing on Tuesday before his future appeal, Mokbel spoke out for the first time about the legal drama and a crucial 2006 conversation with Ms Gobbo before he fled Australia and became the nation’s most wanted man.
“She told me that I’m gonna be charged with three murders and I should seriously think about absconding,” he said of their discussion while he was on trial for importing cocaine.
At that time, Ms Gobbo was a newly registered police informer.
Mokbel said Ms Gobbo claimed to have a source in anti-gangland unit the Purana task force who said her client was about to be charged with three murders.
She said a man had pleaded guilty to the 2003 murder of kickboxer Michael Marshall and was going to be a witness against Mokbel.
“If you get found guilty you’re going to get life with life,” he said Ms Gobbo told him.
Mokbel fled in March 2006 before the drug trial ended and was arrested in Greece in June 2007 after a global hunt. Extradition took 11 months.
He said upon his return to Australia the late Carl Williams organised him a “secret phone” hidden in a boxing bag in 2009 so he could speak to Ms Gobbo directly from Barwon Prison.
Baby-faced killer Williams said police had been listening in on their legal calls on the prison phone, on which Mokbel had 76 calls with Ms Gobbo over four years.
He said that about February 2009 there were rumours about Ms Gobbo “being a dog” but he did not believe them.
“No definitely not, I trusted her so much,” he said.
“When you spend a bit of time with her you think she’s the staunchest person, 10 times more stauncher than any criminal out there when it comes to Victoria Police.”
He said Ms Gobbo was “always against them” and “you’d never pick her to be on the other side of the fence”.
“But she was,” his barrister Julie Condon KC replied, “a human source”.
“Exactly … still shocked, to be quite honest,” Mokbel said.
His evidence reveals that his extradition from Greece is likely to be the centrepiece of his appeal strategy to have his drug conviction overturned.
He pleaded guilty to a series of drug offences in April 2011, claiming he felt “backed in a corner” and got 30 years jail.
Asked if he would have pleaded up “knowing what you know now” he said, “no hope in hell – I would have fought it all the way.”
Mokbel will be cross-examined by lawyers for the DPP on Wednesday before Justice Elizabeth Fullerton. This 12-week hearing will seek answers to 25 crucial questions to be sent to the Court of Appeal.
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