Tony Mokbel cleared of some serious drug trafficking charges over Lawyer X scandal

Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel had to settle for a quiet, early lunch in the CBD rather than a big celebration after being delivered a mixed bag in his appeal against serious drug convictions.

Holding hands with his girlfriend, the gangland figure walked from the Court of Appeal around the corner to Steak House Grill 66, which offers as part of its menu $205 tomahawk and $105 rib-eye char grilled steaks.

Mokbel would have been right to be quietly confident on Friday morning as he entered the green court – decked out with furnishing of the same colour.

Both the underworld and legal fraternity had been tipping Mokbel would walk away with a clean sweep of appeal victories.

Instead, the 60-year-old gangland figure stood behind a small glass screen as judges Stephen McLeish, Maree Kennedy and Stephen Kaye unanimously tossed out one of his three major drug convictions, ordered a retrial on a second, and upheld a third.

In a dapper navy suit, white shirt and tie, Mokbel showed little reaction other than a slight smile when a supporter yelled out “congratulations”.

He left court for his two-hour lunch still a convicted drug trafficker, on bail and with a dent in his hopes of pursuing a compensation case against the state.

Australia’s underworld drug kingpin was handed a 30-year prison sentence in 2012, with a non-parole period of 22 years, for pleading guilty to masterminding an elaborate drug syndicate.

Mokbel’s barrister, Julie Condon, KC, had argued the prosecution case against her client was corrupted by Nicola Gobbo, who was working as a double agent for police while also representing Mokbel before his sentencing.

Condon said Mokbel should have been made aware that Gobbo was a supergrass before entering his 2012 plea.

The Court of Appeal found Gobbo’s involvement had corrupted one of the cases against Mokbel, known as Operation Quills, to a degree that his conviction should be quashed, but found that didn’t automatically extend to the other prosecutions – known as Magnum and Orbital.

Quills and Magnum relate to convictions for trafficking in large commercial quantities of drugs; Orbital was for trafficking MDMA and inciting the importation of the drug in 2005, and Magnum also for trafficking methylamphetamine across 2006 and 2007.

Prosecutors must now decide if they want to pursue a fresh trial for Orbital, which legal sources said was unlikely. The Office of Public Prosecutions officially said they were yet to decide.

One senior legal figure, who asked not to be named, said the matter was likely to end with an agreement from both sides that Mokbel has already served enough time behind bars.

One underworld source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mokbel was just happy to be home.

The decision, though, throws doubt over whether Mokbel could receive a substantial payout from Victoria Police for his more than 17 years behind bars.

Legal expert Nick Papas, KC, said that because Mokbel was acquitted of Quills, there could still be an argument for compensation.

“The fact that the Court of Appeal has quashed those convictions indicates there was a serious miscarriage of justice. He should never have been convicted, in the eyes of the court, because of the conduct of the police, Gobbo and the state of Victoria,” Papas said.

“Therefore, there may well be some sort of argument relating to compensation or civil action.”

But the appeal that was dismissed related to a prison term of 20 years, which damages Mokbel’s argument that his entire stretch behind bars was unwarranted.

In the judgment released on Friday, the judges said the joint efforts of Gobbo and police to secure critical evidence from a person for whom she was acting, involved a fundamental debasement of her professional obligations.

This, they found, infected the whole Quills prosecution, such that it would have been a profound affront to the administration of justice if it had proceeded to trial.

The Quills case had alleged Mokbel trafficked ecstasy while the head of a criminal enterprise in 2005 that involved the large-scale preparation and pressing of ecstasy pills from powder on two pill presses at a Coburg factory, and later a third pill press in a Craigieburn garage. In total, it was alleged that in excess of 30 kilograms of MDMA was pressed into ecstasy pills on those three presses.

“Gobbo pursued a purpose, shared with Victoria Police, of securing the conviction and imprisonment of the applicant by exploiting her lawyer/client relationships in a grossly improper manner. Her conduct was, and hopefully will always remain, entirely unprecedented, unique and extraordinary. Axiomatically, the degree of impropriety involved in that conduct was of the highest order,” they said.

“Although the alleged offending was serious and evil, the way the evidence was obtained meant that placing it before a jury would have undermined fundamental principles of the criminal justice system.”

The court also found that the failure of Victoria Police and through it, the prosecution, to disclose the conduct of Gobbo “impugned the integrity of his [Mokbel’s] guilty pleas”.

He was therefore not fully informed of the circumstances, and his pleas could not be attributed to a “genuine consciousness of guilt”, they said.

The Magnum case related to the trafficking of a commercial quantity of methylamphetamine and via a large-scale criminal enterprise manufacturing and distributing methylamphetamine while he was overseas, and involved thousands of hours of police phone intercepts.

The justices found the Magnum investigation was conducted entirely when the applicant was outside the jurisdiction, having absconded to Greece during the Plutonium trial, and that Gobbo gave no information to police that was relevant to the investigation.

The Orbital case alleged Mokbel commissioned the importation of MDMA powder into Australia in 2005 by placing an order with undercover police for 100 kilograms at a cost of $1.2 million.

The justices found that without the evidence of one witness, known as Mr Bickely, the prosecution would’ve been weakened but viable, prompting them to order Mokbel face a retrial.

“It has also not been shown that a trial in the Orbital matter would necessarily be unfair, despite the passing of time and the loss of some evidence,” they said.

Mokbel orchestrated one of the most infamous escapes in Australian history while awaiting trial for the drug charges. He smuggled himself out of Australia in a specially designed yacht – before being tracked down in Greece a year later, in a restaurant wearing a wig.

When returned to Australia and sentenced, he later survived a serious assault in jail in 2019, telling the court he was no longer the same man he once was.

In April, Mokbel was granted bail by the Court of Appeal, as part of his quest to quash his drug-trafficking convictions, subject to about 30 conditions, including a curfew, daily reporting at his nearby police station, a ban on using smartphones or encrypted apps, and an ankle monitoring bracelet. That ankle bracelet was removed recently following changes to the private bail monitoring rules.

Despite his partial win on Friday, Mokbel, who had been behind bars since 2007, won’t have his entire criminal history erased.

In the early 1980s, he was convicted of offences including assault, threats to kill, resisting police arrest and possessing a firearm.

In 1992, he was then jailed for a year for attempting to bribe a County Court judge.

Gobbo was first registered as a police informer in 1995, but it wasn’t until 10 years later that she was officially given the pseudonym, Informer 3838.

In November 2024, Justice Elizabeth Fullerton found that police took part in a “joint criminal enterprise” to pervert the course of justice when they used Gobbo to help bring down Mokbel by convincing a drug cook to plead guilty and turn supergrass against him.

Mokbel was ordered to return to court on November 6.

Late on Friday, the location of his anticipated after-party remained a tightly held secret.

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