Will jailhouse attack signal the end of Tony Mokbel’s big-wig reign?

As one of the nation’s biggest drug barons, Tony Mokbel once wielded the sort of power only the super rich can have. But behind bars, there’s only so much protection his shrinking wealth and influence can offer. NEW CRIME PODCAST

As a crook, Tony Mokbel was always more a bent businessman than a street thug who got lucky.

It’s true his first heavy conviction was for being sprung with an unlicensed gun but his real power came from amassing untold millions of “black” money and laundering it at the racetrack, the casino and in a string of “false front” retail businesses.

With money came power of the sort the extremely rich have: the sort that comes from around-the-clock lawyers, accountants and bodyguards and sometimes obliging police and public servants.

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Paramedics treated Mokbel and another prisoner at Barwon Prison after the incident. Picture: Seven News

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The rich man who lavishes everyone from the pizza boy to the penthouse owner to the party-boy politician with $100 notes soon builds a network of loyal supporters who last while the money does.

With Mokbel, the violence was implied because he could pay for it.

The near-fatal attack on Mokbel in Barwon Prison this week might be a sign that his influence is waning in the brutal jungle politics of prison, where might is right.

Whether Mokbel lives or dies — but especially if he dies — the rumour mill will hum with theories about who wanted him killed and why.

There will be wild conspiracy theories and there will be shrewd analyses of the known facts.

Tony Mokbel, wearing a wig, upon his arrest in the coastal Athens suburb of Glyfada in 2007.

Mokbel arrives at an Athens court in 2008. Picture: AP/Thanassis Stavrakis

Oddly, these can be the same thing: the difference between crazed conspiracy theory and a clever deduction can be nothing but time.

The raw facts don’t change — two prisoners are stabbed — but the explanation for the attack can depend on who is doing the talking.

An example. When Carl Williams was attacked and killed in a different unit of the same prison in 2010, it seemed an obvious move by a rogue cop to get rid of a talkative crook who could implicate him in the double murder of Terry and Christine Hodson some years earlier.

Inside the Barwon Prison’s Acacia Unit gym area where Matthew Johnson murdered Carl Williams.

The rogue cop theory was so irresistible that some still have trouble letting it go completely.

It is absolutely true that the rogue cop benefited from Williams’ death.

It was only later it became apparent that another rogue hoodlum also had reasons to keep Carl Williams quiet.

Back in the bad old days, in 2000, the young hoodlum had helped the late Dino Dibra kill would-be standover man “Mad Richard” Mladenich in a seedy St Kilda motel.

Williams had ordered the “hit” because Mladenich owed him $120,000 and wasn’t about to pay it.

Tony Mokbel coming out of the trial in the court yard in Greece in 2007.

The hoodlum, therefore, stood to gain if Carl Williams died before he could give police information about every unsolved murder he knew about. And so the source of the supposed conspiracy behind Matthew Johnson’s fatal attack on Williams switched from the rogue cop to the hoodlum, though both benefited.

With Mokbel, the most obvious explanation for the attack is that he unwittingly upset easily excited people by being described as a prison powerbroker in the Sunday Herald Sun exclusive revealing he had intervened (on behalf of a young prisoner) with a Pacific Islander standover gang.

Carl Williams, Andrew Veniamin and Tony Mokbel back in the day. Picture: Supplied

Any peace in prison is uneasy. It takes the smallest spark to ignite the sort of violence we saw on Monday afternoon.

There could be more to it than a simple power struggle between brute force and Mokbel’s shrinking reserves of money and influence. But the only sure bet is this: even if Mokbel survives he will have lost face in the underworld hierarchy he has dominated much of his life.

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Originally published as Will jailhouse attack signal the end of Tony Mokbel’s big-wig reign?