Life and times of underworld figure Tony Mokbel
EARLY LIFE OF TONY MOKBEL
* Antonios Sajih Mokbel was born in Kuwait in 1965 to a Lebanese family. His family immigrated to Australia when he was eight years old.
* Grew up in poverty in Melbourne’s northern suburbs
* He started working at his brother’s pizza shop as a teenager, but within six years he became head of a multimillion-dollar drug empire.
EARLY PROVISIONS
* Early 1980s: Mokbel was convicted of various crimes, including assault, threats to kill, resisting arrest, and possession of a weapon.
* 1992: Sentenced to 12 months in prison for trying to bribe a District Court judge
* 1998: Convicted of amphetamine production
ESCAPE TO GREECE, DRUG TRAFFICKING AND MURDER ACCUSES
* March 2006: Mokbel disappeared while being released on bail in the case filed for the importation of 2 kg of cocaine and was sentenced in his absence to 12 years in prison, with a minimum of nine.
* 24 December 2006: Mokbel arrived in Greece after escaping from Australia by yacht; He hid in rural Victoria for eight months before traveling to Western Australia to escape.
* February 2007: Mokbel was charged over the 2004 murder of gang leader Lewis Moran
* June 2007: He was arrested in an Athens cafe and police applied to extradite him to Australia, later that month he was charged with the second murder of kickboxer Michael Marshall in 2003.
* 2009: Marshall murder charge against Mokbel is dropped by prosecutors and trial for Lewis Moran murder begins, but jury finds Mokbel not guilty
* 2011: Mokbel pleaded guilty to trafficking a large commercial quantity of drugs and soliciting the importation of a prohibited import known as Quills, Magnum and Orbital charges related to the trafficking of MDMA and methamphetamine; Details of old murder charges emerged after a restraining order was lifted.
* 2012: Sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking with a non-parole period of at least 22 years
MOKBEL’S OBJECTIONS
* 2017: Mokbel makes first application to appeal drug conviction
* 2019: Stabbed at Barwon Prison and hospitalized with brain damage, the same year his former lawyer Nicola Gobbo was publicly exposed as a Victoria Police informant.
* 2020: The appeals court overturns Mokbel’s cocaine conviction, known as the Plutonium charge, after prosecutors acknowledged a miscarriage of justice because he was represented by Ms Gobbo, his sentence and conviction are annulled and a retrial is ordered.
* 2021: Prosecutors granted a stay of execution to restart the cocaine trafficking case
* 2023: Mokbel’s total sentence is revised by the appeals court from 30 years (22 minimum) to 26 years with a 20-year non-parole period for his three remaining drug trafficking charges.
* 2024: NSW Judge Elizabeth Fullerton delivers verdict ahead of plea to remaining drug trafficking charges, saying police and Ms Gobbo perverted the course of justice in a joint criminal attempt to bring down Mokbel
* April 1, 2025: Mokbel applies for bail on appeal due to delays in hearing his long-awaited Lawyer X legal challenge, the strength of his case and his poor physical health while in custody
* April 4, 2025: Three judges grant Mokbel bail, his first taste of freedom since his arrest in Greece 18 years ago, secured by his sister’s $1 million bail, and that he must meet 30 conditions.
* September 2, 2025: Mokbel’s appeal on remaining drug trafficking charges begins in Melbourne
* 3 October 2025: The Victorian Court of Appeal delivers a split decision on the remaining three charges. Quills was acquitted on his charges, ordered a retrial in Orbital, and lost his appeal of the Magnum brief. His bail was extended
* December 19, 2025: Prosecutors seeking additional time to decide whether Mokbel will be retried on remaining drug trafficking charges are harshly criticized by Mokbel’s lawyer
* 6 February 2026: Mokbel left the Supreme Court of Victoria a free man after the Director of Public Prosecutions announced that the final charges against him had been withdrawn and that he would not face another trial for Lawyer X’s offending.
