Tony Mokbel discharged from hospital after an overnight stay

Underworld figure Tony Mokbel has been discharged from hospital after being admitted for a suspected blood clot.

Drug lord Tony Mokbel was discharged from Geelong Hospital on Friday. Picture: Teegan Dolling/Twitter

Tony Mokbel has been discharged from St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.

The drug trafficker was reportedly rushed from the Geelong Hospital to St Vincent’s in Fitzroy on Friday, where he has since been discharged.

A major security operation has surrounded the hospitalisation of the gangland figure.

An armoured vehicle from Corrections Victoria’s security and emergency services group was seen in the car park on Friday.

It is understood the underworld figure was transported to Geelong Hospital from the corrections facility in an ambulance about 8pm on Thursday.

Sources have suggested that his condition could be related to a blood clot.

A Department of Justice and Community Safety spokeswoman confirmed a patient was taken to hospital on Thursday night.

“One prisoner was taken to hospital this evening by non-urgent ambulance,” she said.

“Corrections Victoria does not comment on individual prisoners or their placements.”

Mokbel has suffered a string of health issues in recent years during his 30-year jail term for drug trafficking.

Mokbel has suffered a string of health issues.

Last month, a court heard that the drug kingpin’s mental health had deteriorated behind bars due to extreme social isolation.

In April last year, he was also rushed to Geelong Hospital from prison after suffering chest pains.

The 57-year-old went into cardiac arrest when two inmates at Barwon Prison bashed and stabbed him with a makeshift shiv in 2019.

He suffered a heart attack while incarcerated in February 2012.

Mokbel is serving a 30-year jail term for three counts of drug trafficking and has essentially remained in protective custody since the stabbing in Barwon Prison’s mainstream section.

In October last year, he launched legal action against the Andrews government and Barwon Prison, claiming his human rights had been breached.

Mokbel said there had been 18 days since August 2022 when he had been locked up for periods longer than 24 hours at a time.

In 2006, Mokbel skipped out on his $1m bail for cocaine smuggling charges, fleeing to Greece as police monitored the phones of members of his drug-dealing cartel in a bid to locate the drug boss.

Investigators had help uncovering the fugitive from Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo and Mokbel’s brother Horty, with calls from his panicked associates warning him about police closing in putting an end to his 15-month stint on the run.

Convictions in three separate cases have since been overturned because of Gobbo’s work as a police informant while working as a lawyer for several of Victoria’s most notorious underworld figures.