A court in Melbourne ruled Friday that one of Australia’s most famous drug kingpins must face a retrial after his defence lawyer was revealed to have been a police informant.
Tony Mokbel — one of the key figures in Melbourne’s years-long gangland war — was handed a 30-year prison sentence in 2012 after pleading guilty to masterminding an elaborate drug syndicate.
Violence linked to his group, known as “The Company”, claimed dozens of lives and was later immortalised in the hugely popular Australian TV series “Underbelly”.
But it was later revealed that Mokbel’s high-profile lawyer at the time, Nicola Gobbo, was feeding information to police while supposedly defending her clients.
Mokbel spent about 18 years behind bars but was released on bail this year after a court ruled he had a strong chance of overturning the criminal convictions.
His appeal hinged on the fact he would not have pleaded guilty if he had been aware of Gobbo’s double life, his legal team told Victoria’s Court of Appeal this year.
The court acquitted Mokbel of one charge on Friday, ordering a retrial for another and dismissed his appeal relating to a third charge.
Mokbel, who did not comment as he left court, remains on bail before the case returns to court later this year.
The court ruling is just the latest in what could be many more — prosecutors informed 22 people that they could have grounds to appeal in 2019.
That same year, Faruk Orman walked free after he was jailed 12 years ago for a gangland murder — he had always proclaimed his innocence.
During his time in prison Mokbel was brutally attacked, with one man stabbing him “up to seven times” and another kicking him in the head, court documents show.
He was left with displaced brain tissue, a fractured skull, a broken jaw and a pneumothorax of his right lung.
The incident related to a newspaper article claiming Mokbel was a feared “top enforcer” and had “disrupted an extortion racket within the jail run by a group of prisoners of Pacific Islander descent”, court documents show.
Mokbel told prison staff he held no concerns for his safety the day before the attack.
– Double life –
Gobbo — also referred to as Lawyer X and Informer 3838 — claims that over 300 people were arrested and charged based on the information she provided, according to a June 2015 letter that was made public in December.
A Royal Commission of inquiry in 2020 found Gobbo’s double life during a period of intense gang bloodletting in Australia’s second-biggest city were “fundamental and appalling breaches” of her obligations as counsel to her clients.
Gobbo was a key police source during the critical years of gangland prosecutions between 2005 and 2009, but was also registered as an informant as far back as 1999 — two years before she was admitted to practice law.
She was recruited as a police informer after being charged with drug offences in 1993.
No conviction was recorded on condition that she did not reoffend, according to a police informant registration document filed with the Royal Commission.
Victorian police spent five years and millions of dollars fighting in the courts to keep Gobbo’s identity a secret, maintaining that she could be murdered if it came to light.
Gobbo told a court in 2024 she had been living in hiding for years since her double life had been revealed.
“I’m tired and I’m broken,” she said. “I’ve just had enough.”
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