Major update on drug kingpin’s appeal

Police efforts in recruiting and using ex-barrister Nicola Gobbo to quash Victoria’s bloody gangland wars has been slammed as “deliberately unlawful conduct” in a scathing answer to questions raised during a jailed drug kingpin’s appeal process.

Tony Mokbel, 59, appeared under heavy police protection in Victoria’s Supreme Court on Monday as Justice Elizabeth Fullerton delivered an overview of the answers to 24 questions she was referred for determination.

Dressed in a sharp suit, Mokbel cracked a few smiles in conversations with his lawyers ahead of the hearing.

The NSW Supreme Court judge, who was brought down from Sydney to hear the case, sat through 61 hearing days earlier this year as 38 witnesses, including Mokbel, senior police officers and legal practitioners gave evidence.

But Justice Fullerton made it clear it was not for her to say whether there was a miscarriage of justice in Mokbel’s case, with that question set to be determined in the Court of Appeal.

“To be clear, my judgment will not address that question,” she said.

“Whether or not Mr Mokbel’s convictions should stand is for the Court of Appeal to determine.”

Mokbel became a key focus of Victoria Police’s Purana Taskforce in the early 2000s. It was tasked with ending the bloody gangland wars and dismantling the drug enterprises they believed fuelled the violence.

He fled overseas in early 2006 just days ahead of a trial and remained at large until he was arrested in Greece on June 5, 2007 and extradited the following year.

In 2011, he pleaded guilty to two counts of trafficking large quantities of MDMA and meth and a charge of incitement to import MDMA.

As a result, Mokbel had four further alleged drug cases discontinued because of his guilty plea and he was jailed for 30 years.

Mokbel was also accused of two murders but not convicted, with one case dropped after Carl Williams was killed in prison and another where a jury found him not guilty.

He began a second appeal against his conviction after learning his lawyer Ms Gobbo had been informing on him to police between September 2005 and January 2009.

Justice Fullerton told the court that she was left with no room for doubt that the singular focus of police in registering Ms Gobbo was to obtain intelligence about Mokbel and his associates.

She said there appeared to be several reasons why Ms Gobbo agreed, but her primary motivation was to be rid of Mokbel, whom she viewed as a “career criminal”, as a client.

“Her primary motivation was the arrest, conviction and imprisonment of Mr Mokbel while masquerading as his trusted legal adviser,” the judge said.

To this end, Justice Fullerton said Ms Gobbo 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.

The judge found, on the balance of probabilities, that Ms Gobbo and four police officers created a “joint criminal enterprise to attempt to pervert the course of justice” to achieve that outcome through deliberately unlawful conduct.

In the years following, Justice Fullerton found, Victoria Police engaged in a deliberate effort to not disclose Ms Gobbo’s use as an informer to accused people as they were required to do.

She said police had used concerns for Ms Gobbo’s safety, while legitimate, to “subvert the proper process to make a public interest immunity claim” in an appropriate court.

Justice Fullerton said the “most controversial questions” referred to her was whether the independent Director of Public Prosecutions knew or ought to have known about Ms Gobbo’s role.

Then Director of Public Prosecutions John Champion was appointed as a Victorian Supreme Court judge in 2017.

“That issue has not been the subject of any determination of this court in any of the so-called Lawyer X cases,” Justice Fullerton said.

“Neither has it been the subject of comment in this court or the High Court.”

She found that as of a meeting with senior police officers in September 2012, Justice Champion had “sufficient information” to activate his duty of independent disclosure to the accused parties’ legal representatives that Ms Gobbo had been an informer.

“I was unable to reach a conclusion as to why the director breached his duty, other than it being an error of judgment,” she said.

“I was not satisfied the necessary degree of rigour was applied by the director in this case to his duty of disclosure.”

But she noted it was Justice Champion’s determination, while still the director in early 2016, that first tested whether Ms Gobbo’s role could be subject to a public interest claim in court and ultimately took steps to ensure Mokbel and others were informed.

Her full report, spanning more than 600 pages, will be published online at a later date to allow the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, the Chief Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police and legal representatives of named current and former police officers to file legal challenges to suppress parts of the judgment.

Mokbel will appear in the Court of Appeal next month for a directions hearing on his appeal case.