Tony Mokbel: Underworld kingpin’s new life as a free man after Lawyer-X revelation

Once considered a major player in Melbourne’s underworld, convicted drug boss Tony Mokbel has now enjoyed his first days as a free man.

The colourful character had his final outstanding criminal case dropped by prosecutors in Victoria’s Supreme Court on Friday morning in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it minute-long hearing.

“Thank you, Your Honour,” Mokbel said through a wide grin, after judicial registrar Tim Freeman told him; “You are discharged from your undertakings of bail and free to leave”.

Convicted drug trafficker Tony Mokbel has shared his feelings and plans for the future after the final case hanging over his head was dropped.

That moment brought to a close for Mokbel a years-long fight for fair justice, after Victoria’s legal system was rocked by the outing of gangland barrister Nicola Gobbo as a police informant.

Known as the Lawyer-X scandal, the high-profile lawyer provided Victoria Police with intelligence and helped convince Mokbel’s associates to turn against him from 2005 to 2009.

At the time, Purina Taskforce detectives were desperate to end the bloodshed of a deadly underworld war when Ms Gobbo was approached in September 2005.

Rising from humble beginnings as a child born to immigrant Lebanese parents, Mokbel rose to become the head of a highly sophisticated drug enterprise known as “The Company”.

In 2006, Mokbel became Australia’s most wanted man after fleeing the country on a yacht while on bail.

He hid out in regional Victoria until October that year before travelling across the country to Fremantle, south of Perth, and departing for Greece the following month. Mokbel would later claim he was advised by Ms Gobbo to flee – an allegation she denies.

He disappeared after receiving a tip-off police were about to charge him in connection with two murders; those of Michael Marshall in 2003 and Lewis Moran in 2004.

Mokbel was later acquitted of Moran’s murder and prosecutors dropped charges in relation to Marshall’s death before the case reached trial.

Despite the brazen escape, Mokbel was arrested in Athens in June 2007 and turned to his trusted legal adviser Ms Gobbo to provide advice during the extradition process.

She was feeding information from these discussions with Mokbel and his Greek lawyers to police and he was extradited to Australia the following year.

In 2011, Mokbel pleaded guilty to drug trafficking-related charges stemming from three police investigations, known as the Quills, Orbital and Magnum matters, in a deal that saw four other cases dropped.

The Quills matter related to alleged trafficking of more than 30kg of MDMA in 2005 through a pill manufacturing enterprise; the Orbital matter was an alleged attempt to import 100kg of MDMA in 2005; and the Magnum matter related to large-scale methylamphetamine manufacturing and distribution in 2006 and 2007 after Mokbel had fled overseas.

At the earliest, he would have been eligible for parole in 2033.

Ms Gobbo was outed as Lawyer-X following a lengthy legal challenge that ended with a High Court ruling in December 2018. The move led Mokbel to launch fresh appeals against his convictions and sentence and spurred a Royal Commission.

In 2019 Mokbel was subject to a brutal prison attack that left him placed in solitary confinement for his safety, and in March 2022 he suffered a heart attack that impacted his life expectancy.

In 2024, NSW Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Fullerton was brought down from Sydney to hold weeks of hearings and ultimately deliver answers on Ms Gobbo’s role in Mokbel’s convictions and other issues in a 579-page judgment.

Justice Fullerton found police had developed Ms Gobbo as a source for the singular reasons of gaining intelligence about Mokbel and his associates, while her “primary motivation” was to bring down Mokbel.

The judge said Ms Gobbo had strategised with police on how to target three of Mokbel’s associates – also clients of hers – to turn coat and give evidence.

“They were each deceived by Ms Gobbo into believing her advice was independent legal advice when it was anything but that,” she said.

Justice Fullerton found, with respect to the Quills and Orbital cases, Mokbel was “not able to fully assess the strengths and weaknesses of the prosecution case against him” and was deliberately misled and deceived.

For the Magnum investigation, she found the conduct of Ms Gobbo and Victoria Police did not affect the case while Mokbel was in Greece, but added the extradition would have “looked different” if Ms Gobbo’s role was disclosed.

Mokbel was released on bail under strict conditions in April last year pending the outcome of his appeal, which was delivered that October. He’d spent just shy of 19 years behind bars.

Melbourne underworld kingpin Tony Mokbel has walked free on bail to cheers from some in the crowd as he prepares to run his long-awaited Lawyer-X appeal.

The Court of Appeal quashed the Quills case, finding Ms Gobbo’s involvement represented a “fundamental debasement” of her professional obligations and infected the whole prosecution.

The panel of three judges overturned the Orbital conviction, sending it back to the Director of Public Prosecutions to decide if there should be a retrial and dismissed the Magnum appeal.

Mokbel’s sentence was set aside, and he was resentenced on the Magnum case to 13 years, 7 months and 15 days recognised as time already served.

The judges said the Magnum case represented “very grave” offending, with Mokbel earning more than $4 million in a 12-month period leading a drug trafficking enterprise while a fugitive from the criminal justice system.

“This was egregious and shameless offending,” they wrote.

“As we said in the appeal against conviction, the proliferation of prohibited drugs is a disastrous blight on our society and trafficking in such drugs on a commercial scale is simply evil.”

Speaking outside court on Friday after the prosecutors announced they would not seek a new trial on the Orbital case, Mokbel smiled as said “life goes on”.

He told reporters it was the “biggest mistake of my life being in jail” but, when asked if he regretted drug trafficking, Mokbel said: “I do not regret anything”.