The organised crime figure Tony Mokbel will be released on bail as a consequence of the “joint criminal enterprise” Victorian police entered with Lawyer X, Nicola Gobbo, a court has found.
The Victorian court of appeal ruled on Friday that Mokbel should be released and that there was a “very strong” chance his remaining convictions would be quashed.
He was bailed pending an appeal of those convictions.
Mokbel is serving a 26-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and importation. He is appealing these convictions on the grounds that his lawyer was Gobbo, who was also a registered police informer.
Mokbel has argued he would not have agreed to a plea deal in the case if he had known Gobbo was providing evidence against him to the force.
Justice Karin Emerton, the president of the court of appeal, Justice Robert Osborn, and Justice Jane Dixon ruled on the appeal.
Emerton said it was clear Mokbel had been “deliberately misled and deceived”, and that he had “a very strong case that his convictions … should be quashed”.
She found that while Mokbel previously fled Australia for Greece while on bail in 2006, that effort had been “spectacularly expensive and spectacularly unsuccessful”, and that stringent conditions would negate any risk of a similar plot.
But she also commented that the court considered it unlikely Mokbel would flee while his appeals remained ongoing, and commented that the “harsh conditions” he had been held in for almost two decades would have had “some effect on deterrence”.
Mokbel, a central figure in Melbourne’s gangland war, was granted bail on 31 conditions, including that he lives with his sister, reports to police daily, abides by a strict curfew, is subject to electronic monitoring, and does not own or use a smartphone. He was also released on a $1m bail guarantee.
The hearing on Friday lasted less than 20 minutes, but it was nonetheless one of the more remarkable moments in a saga which has stretched on for more than six years, since Gobbo was outed as Lawyer X.
Mokbel, who was transported to court in a police armoured vehicle known as a BearCat, stood briefly to confirm he understood the conditions of his bail.
Mokbel walked free for the first time in 18 years, beaming as he left the court on Friday.
In February 2019, Mokbel was beaten and stabbed in custody, and left with a permanent neurological deficit.
The court found that since his release from hospital following these injuries, he had been held in substantial isolation within prison, with limited contact with only one other prisoner, and family visits.
In December 2020, his conviction for importing cocaine, known as the Plutonium offences, were quashed on appeal. The court of appeal ordered that Mokbel should be retried, but the commonwealth director of public prosecutions decided not to proceed.
On 7 March 2023, Mokbel was resentenced for offences relating to three other cases.
In its 25-page written judgment, the court largely echoed the findings of New South Wales supreme court justice Elizabeth Fullerton about the conduct of Gobbo, and its impact on Mokbel’s convictions.
They found Mokbel established “truly exceptional circumstances” as the basis for his bail application.
“As Fullerton J found, in the absence of disclosure of Ms Gobbo’s conduct bearing on the procurement of evidence adverse to the applicant and the conduct of the extradition proceedings, the applicant was obviously in no position to properly assess whether it was in his best interests to agree to the global plea deal which he entered into.
“He was deliberately misled and deceived as to the strength and nature of the prosecution cases.
“It follows that he has a very strong case that the deliberate concealment and nondisclosure of Ms Gobbo’s actions should be regarded as vitiating the plea agreement and the pleas of guilty entered pursuant to it. In turn, he has a very strong case that his convictions … should be quashed.”
