Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel, who was released from custody in April after almost 18 years, has had another legal victory after receiving an undisclosed financial settlement over a savage attack in Barwon Prison in 2019.
But Mokbel will be unable to access the funds until at least June 2026, after the Victorian government paid the settlement into a “prisoner compensation quarantine fund” on Thursday.
Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel walked from custody earlier this year.Credit: Daniel Pockett
It is unknown when the case was settled, but lawyers acting for the now 59-year-old launched Supreme Court proceedings against the state in February 2023, when Mokbel was still behind bars.
According to a statement of claim, the governor and senior staff at Barwon Prison had failed to take adequate measures to protect Mokbel from a bashing and stabbing by two fellow inmates on February 11, 2019.
Senior prison staff are accused of failing to adequately respond to an anonymous handwritten note received by the prison a few days earlier, which warned a high-profile inmate in the Diosma unit would be “taken out”.
Prison authorities also failed to take necessary measures to protect Mokbel following a story in the Herald Sun a day before the assault, which made him a target of inmates of Polynesian background, according to court documents.
Tony Mokbel being treated after the near-fatal attack in 2019. Credit: County Court of Victoria
Mokbel spent five days in a coma at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and sustained a “traumatic brain injury causing intellectual disability”.
Lawyers acting for him had pursued aggravated and exemplary damages because they also alleged the prison had acted unlawfully and exacerbated their client’s psychological injuries by rehousing him in a high-security unit upon his return from hospital.
The financial settlement made to Mokbel is the subject of a non-disclosure agreement. His lawyer, Jeremy King from Robinson Gill, declined to comment.
On April 4, the convicted cocaine trafficker was granted bail after Supreme Court judge Karin Emerton found the Lawyer X scandal had corrupted his prosecution, as his barrister, Nicola Gobbo, was secretly a police informant.
Emerton said Mokbel had a “very strong case that his convictions … should be quashed”. A four-day hearing is scheduled to take place on September 2.
In 2012, Mokbel was handed a 30-year prison sentence, with a non-parole period of 22 years, after pleading guilty to masterminding an elaborate drug syndicate.
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