Police want to keep sensitive information secret in Tony Mokbel appeal

Police want to keep Tony Mokbel and his legal team blind to sensitive information as the drug tsar fights his trafficking convictions.

Police want to keep sensitive information secret from Tony Mokbel and his legal team.

Drug tsar Tony Mokbel and his lawyers should be kept blind to some of the most sensitive information police hold in the case, prosecutors argue.

In a hearing before the Court of Appeal on Thursday morning, Chief Commissioner Shane Patton’s barrister, Sashi Maharaj QC, made a submission for closed hearings to some “highly sensitive’’ material which the force will make claims for public interest immunity.

The court heard Victoria Police want this information kept secret not only from Mokbel, but also his legal team.

Victoria Police has suggested “amici curiae’’ — an independent friend to the court — could review the files.

Mokbel’s team objects to the claim.

The court will reconvene on Tuesday to rule on the dispute.

The confidential information could be relevant to Mokbel’s appeal against his drug trafficking convictions.

Mokbel, known as “Fat Tony”, is appealing on the basis his lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, aka

Lawyer X, was a secret police informer.

Mokbel, now 56, pleaded guilty in 2011 to a series of state and federal drug trafficking convictions.

The Lawyer X saga, however, gave him an avenue of appeal.

Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions and Mokbel’s lawyers are in dispute over the extent of the professional relationship the drug baron had with Gobbo.

Mokbel, who was handed a 30-year jail term, must serve a minimum 22 years before being eligible for parole in 2033.

But it is almost certain at least some of his overall sentence will be shaved after his 2006 conviction for trafficking cocaine was quashed last year over the Lawyer X scandal.

Mokbel’s legal challenge will go before three Court of Appeal judges sometime between April and June next year.