Melbourne underworld figure Tony Mokbel’s life timeline, from pizza shop worker to drug kingpin

TONY MOKBEL’S EARLY LIFE

* Born Antonios Sajih Mokbel in Kuwait to Lebanese parents in 1965, his family migrated to Australia when he was eight

* Grew up in poverty in Melbourne’s northern suburbs

* As a teenager, started out working at his brother’s pizza shop but within six years became the head of a multi-million dollar drug empire

EARLY CONVICTIONS

* Early 1980s: Mokbel convicted of a variety of offences, including assaults, threats to kill, resisting arrest, possessing a gun

* 1992: Sentenced to 12 months for trying to bribe a County Court judge

* 1998: Convicted for amphetamine manufacturing

ESCAPE TO GREECE, DRUG TRAFFICKING AND MURDER CHARGES

* March 2006: Mokbel disappears while on bail during a trial over the importation of 2kg of cocaine and sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison, a minimum of nine

* December 24, 2006: Arrives in Greece after fleeing Australia on a yacht he hid in rural in Victoria for eight months before driving to WA to make his escape

* February 2007: Charged over the 2004 murder of gangland patriarch Lewis Moran

* June 2007: Arrested at a cafe in Athens and police apply to extradite him to Australia, later that month charged with a second murder - of kickboxer Michael Marshall in 2003

* 2009: The Marshall murder charge against Mokbel is dropped by prosecutors and a trial over the Lewis Moran murder begins, however a jury finds him not guilty of that murder

* 2011: Mokbel pleads guilty to two counts of trafficking a large commercial quantity of drugs, and details of his former murder charges are revealed after a suppression order is lifted

* 2012: Jailed for drug trafficking for 30 years with a minimum of 22 years on parole

MOKBEL’S APPEALS

* 2017: Mokbel files his first application to appeal his drug convictions

* 2019: Stabbed in Barwon Prison and taken to hospital, suffering a brain injury, the same year his former barrister Nicola Gobbo is publicly outed as a Victoria Police informer

* 2020: Appeal court quashes Mokbel’s cocaine conviction after prosecutors concede there had been a miscarriage of justice due to him being represented by Ms Gobbo, his sentence and conviction set aside and a retrial is ordered

* 2021: Prosecutors file a notice of discontinuance for the cocaine trafficking retrial

* 2023: Mokbel’s total head sentence sentence is revised from 30 years with a minimum of 22 years, to 26 years with a non-parole of 20 years

* 2024: NSW Justice Fullerton issues a judgment on legal questions ahead of his appeal of remaining drug trafficking charges, where she says police and Ms Gobbo perverted the course of justice in a joint criminal enterprise to take Mokbel down

* April 1, 2025: Applies for bail on appeal due to delays in his long-awaited Lawyer X legal challenge being heard, the strength of his case and his poor physical health in custody

* April 4, 2025: Three judges will decided whether Mokbel will be released on bail, his first taste of freedom since his arrest in Greece 18 years ago.