This was published 5 years ago
Lawyer X warned police two days before Mokbel's great escape
By Tammy Mills
Two days before Tony Mokbel signed for bail at South Melbourne police station before performing a disappearing act, lawyer-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo warned police he was up to something.
By March 17, 2006, defence barrister Con Heliotis QC and Ms Gobbo, Mr Heliotis’ junior, had closed their case in Mokbel's trial for importing cocaine and Crown prosecutor David Parsons was finishing his address to the jury.
Mokbel was about to go back into custody to await the jury’s verdict.
Ms Gobbo, given the police informer number 3838, told her police handlers she was supposed to meet Mokbel on the weekend, but he had been acting weird.
“Mokbel has told the human source at least twice not to ring him this weekend, which is very strange,” the handlers wrote, in notes revealed in a public inquiry on Thursday.
“Because of this the human source is sure he’s up to some unknown criminal activity this weekend.”
The royal commission into Victoria Police’s management of its informers heard Ms Gobbo’s handlers passed the information to gangland taskforce Purana boss Jim O’Brien before cancelling surveillance.
The former detective inspector made a note in his diary on the day, but on Thursday he couldn’t remember why there was a reference to surveillance being cancelled.
Two days later, on March 19, Mokbel reported to police as per his bail conditions and then disappeared, hiding out in Bonnie Doon before sailing to Greece on a yacht.
Mr O’Brien told the inquiry it was only after reviewing his notes to prepare for the commission that he realised the significance of the tip from their informer.
“Was there any consideration given that he might need to be under surveillance over that weekend?” counsel assisting the commission Megan Tittensor asked him.
“If the significance of that dawned on me he’d have been under surveillance I can tell you that. In fact, I only realised the importance of that entry when I was reviewing it for this process, and I thought, ‘Hello,'" Mr O'Brien said.
It would take Mr O’Brien - played by actor Shane Jacobson in the Underbelly series - and his Purana team almost 15 months to nab Mokbel again.
Mokbel, serving 30 years for drug trafficking, is appealing his conviction in the wake of the informer scandal.
Mr O’Brien’s evidence continues.