Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo was my in-house counsel, my friend, my everything, says Tony Mokbel

Underworld heavy Tony Mokbel said barrister turned police snitch Nicola Gobbo was ‘everything’ to him, detailing in court how they were neighbours who went for dinners and even to the gym.

Nicola Gobbo.

Underworld heavy Tony Mokbel said barrister turned police snitch Nicola Gobbo was “everything” to him, detailing in court how they were neighbours who went for dinners and even to the gym.

“We had a great relationship, yeah,” the convicted drug trafficker said of Lawyer X, who was secretly informing on him to police.

Mokbel, 58, took to the ­Supreme Court witness box for the third day on Thursday during a 12-week hearing before his future appeal, describing his dealings with the supergrass as he fights to have his convictions scrapped.

Before he was jailed for the past 17 years, the Office of Public Prosecutions’ barrister, David Glynn, put to Mokbel that the pair would “socialise”.

“We didn’t go clubbing or anything like that,” Mokbel said.

Rather, Mr Glynn corrected, they would have dinner together, they lived nearby and even went to the gym together.

“She wanted to lose some weight at the time and I helped out as much as I can, yes,” Mokbel said.

“In my opinion she was everything – she was in-house counsel, she was a friend, everything.”

Mokbel, once Australia’s most wanted man after he fled to Greece amid a 2006 cocaine trafficking trial, said when he was extradited to Australia in 2008, Gobbo offered to continue giving him legal advice despite having a conflict.

At that time, she was registered police informer 3838 and was passing on information of all her chats with Mokbel to her handlers.

Mr Glynn asked how that added up when Mokbel agreed he’d said to Gobbo in May 2008, “So you really are leaving me?”

“You don’t know Ms Gobbo,” Mokbel replied.

Judge Elizabeth Fullerton asked him: “What do you mean by that?”

“She was extremely kind to me,” Mokbel said. “She was very friendly to me, we had a great relationship, Your Honour.”

Justice Fullerton asked whether he thought “the friendship side of your dealings with her was over or did you think that friendship would continue?”

“The friendship would definitely continue,” he said.

Records showed Gobbo visited the notorious criminal in prison on February 13, 2009, telling her ­handlers she wanted to see him “one last time and try to quit on good terms”.

“She came in, we discussed a few things … then she left and she was half-limping,” Mokbel said.

She never returned, with Mokbel saying she was “always sick”, and was “morphine and all these tablets”. Mokbel’s evidence continues on Friday.

Herald Sun