Mokbel family member pursuing appeal amid Lawyer-X fallout

Tony Mokbel’s sister-in-law is trying to get an old fraud conviction overturned off-the-back of the Lawyer-X saga.

Zaharoula Mokbel.

Tony Mokbel’s sister-in-law Zaharoula is pushing for her decade-old fraud conviction to be overturned amid continuing fallout from the Lawyer-X royal commission.

In 2019, the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants revealed supergrass Nicola Gobbo secretly helped Victoria Police bolster their case against Ms Mokbel.

As a result of the Lawyer-X saga, 22 people are appealing their convictions or pursuing second or subsequent appeals through the Victorian Supreme Court. They include Mr Mokbel, who is appealing his 30-year jail sentence for drug trafficking on the grounds Ms Gobbo secretly passed on information on him while acting as his lawyer. Jailed underworld kingpin Rob Karam is also appealing his 35-year drug trafficking sentence.

Faruk Orman, who was jailed over his role in the gangland hit on Victor Peirce, was the first person to walk free from prison in the wake of Ms Gobbo’s double life after he successfully appealed his conviction in 2019.

Ms Mokbel was convicted in the Victorian County Court in 2009 of three counts of obtaining a financial benefit by deception and sentenced to a suspended term of 2½ years’ jail. A client of Ms Gobbo, she was convicted over falsified mortgage-loan applications that totalled $2.3m.

A directions hearing was held at the Victorian Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow Ms Mokbel’s barrister Christopher Wareham to clarify what avenues his client had to pursue an appeal. Ms Mokbel had initiated an appeal years ago before revelations about Lawyer-X, and a central issue during Tuesday’s hearing was to discern if a notice to withdraw the abandonment of a previous appeal should be filed.

Mr Wareham acknowledged his client’s intent to pursue an appeal regardless. “The issues we have to plead for … to get over the statutory test for the second and substantive appeal probably won’t be able to be done until the disclosure is made.”

He said wanted to avoid wasting the court’s time or be seen to be taking “two bites of the cherry” if multiple appeals were filed.

“Given that there are a number of cases that are likely to fall into this grey area … it might be useful for the court to indicate whether they are content for matters to be running in tandem,” he said.

In 2019, the Lawyer-X royal commission heard police initially investigated Ms Mokbel as part of a probe by the Purana task force into how the drugs cartel hid the wealth it secured through the gangland wars.