Court orders fresh trial for drug king Tony Mokbel

Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel will face a retrial on charges tainted by Lawyer X in a decision that split Victoria’s Court of Appeal.

Underworld figure Tony Mokbel is lead into a prison van at the Supreme Court in Melbourne in 2011. Picture: AAP

The Victorian Court of Appeal has ordered a retrial for drug king Tony Mokbel on charges tainted by Lawyer X, despite the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions indicating she would not retry the case.

Nicola Gobbo was acting as Mokbel’s lawyer and a police informant leading up to and during his 2006 trial for drug importation.

The Court of Appeal accepted Ms Gobbo suggested to Victoria Police ways they could investigate Mokbel in relation to other offending, provided them with information about her suspicions and beliefs as to his ongoing offending and the identity and conduct of his criminal associates, and provided police with her views as to his prospects in the trial.

Melbourne lawyer Nicola Gobbo, who was revealed as Lawyer X. Picture: ABC

During a hearing last year, the CDPP indicated she would not seek a retrial of the case and did not oppose Mokbel’s conviction being quashed and his 12 year sentence being set aside. In the majority judgment, Justice David Beach and Justice Robert Osborn said the activities of Ms Gobbo and Victoria Police that led to the appellant’s conviction in this matter being quashed “should be thoroughly condemned”.

However, they said such condemnation shouldn’t take the form of an acquittal.

“The very quashing of the appellant’s conviction itself condemns the conduct of Victoria Police in this case and constitutes a significant deterrent to the repetition of such conduct,” they said.

Mokbel has already served his entire sentence but the justices said that did not necessarily mean an acquittal should be ordered because there was powerful public interest militating in favour of a jury trial even if there was no sensible prospect of further punishment.

“The director has foreshadowed that, upon an order for a retrial, she will file a notice of discontinuance,” the court said.

“Without usurping her function, it seems to us that such a step would lead to the proper resolution of these proceedings.”

Court President Chris Maxwell dissented and supported an acquittal being recorded, with Mokbel having served his sentence a significant consideration as well as the CDPP’s decision not to retry the case.

“I consider that to order a retrial for the sole purpose of enabling the director to formalise a decision she has already made would be to elevate form over substance,” he said.

“And it seems highly artificial to order a retrial when the court has already been informed that there will be no retrial … Importantly, however, I regard the fact that the appellant’s trial was ‘corrupted in a manner which debased fundamental premises of the criminal justice system’ as another powerful consideration supporting the conclusion that the interests of justice do not require an order for retrial.”

Mokbel has an appeal pending on Victorian drug charges.