Tony Mokbel

Antonios Sajih Mokbel (Arabic: طوني مقبل) (born 11 August 1965) is an Australian criminal who has been convicted of a number of offences, most prominently commercial drug trafficking.

He has spent most of his life in Melbourne, Australia.

Operation Purana alleged that he is the mastermind behind the Melbourne amphetamine trade.

He has been linked to Carl Williams, and charged but not convicted of two murders in the Melbourne gangland war.

By the end of the 1990s, police had become increasingly aware of the scale of Mokbel's drugs trafficking operations.

Mokbel was first arrested for a street brawl aged 18, and first incarcerated in 1992, having been caught attempting to bribe a judge.

It was after this imprisonment that Mokbel became increasingly involved in the trafficking of drugs in Melbourne, in part to fund his accelerating gambling habit.

He initially dealt in marijuana, then moved in to speed and later ecstasy pills as well.

Mokbel found success in this trade, and rapidly gained wealth and notoriety throughout the next decade, forming an enterprise known as The Company.

In 1997, Mokbel luckily escaped injury and charges when one of his drug labs, worth 78 million dollars, exploded with him in it.

This did not Stymie the growth of his wealth in these years; by 2000, Mokbel owned a Ferrari car, expensive property, and racehorses.

Indicating the scale of his operations at this time, it is known that Mokbel organised and received a shipment of ephedrine great enough to make two billion dollars of street drugs in late 2000.

A prominent drug dealer turned police informant was used to gather evidence on Mokbel's importations between October 2000 and August 2001.

Mokbel was arrested in August 2001 for a small importation of cocaine of the previous year.

It has been alleged that in late 2002 there was a meeting of more than ten Melbourne organised crime figures in Carlton.

At that meeting, it is said that Mokbel was beaten, nearly to death, by Nik Radev's bodyguard, Western Australian Troy Mercanti, who was a member of the Coffin Cheaters motorcycle gang.

Andrew Veniamin was ordered by his then close associate, Mick Gatto, to take Mokbel to a female doctor.

In the following couple of weeks, Mick Gatto was told that Veniamin and Mokbel became close allies.

Mokbel was alleged to have laundered over $2 million through At the Top of the Town, a high-profile Melbourne CBD brothel which he purchased through a business associate.

One of Mokbel's amphetamine producers also ran a brothel in the Melbourne south-eastern suburbs while another Mokbel gang member who trafficked large amounts of drugs for Mokbel also ran a brothel.

He was bailed in 2002, but while on bail, he was caught attempting to organise an importation of drugs chemicals through an undercover AFP officer.

He was arrested on associated charges in September 2005, but again was granted bail.

While still awaiting trial in early 2006, Mokbel received intelligence that Operation Purana officers intended to charge him with murder for his alleged role in two of the Melbourne gangland killings.

He therefore skipped bail and fled after 19 March.

Mokbel first hid himself at a friend's house in Bonnie Doon, Victoria, while an associate made preparations for a maritime escape to Greece.

A team of Greek sailors were recruited, and a yacht was purchased and transported to Fremantle, Western Australia, where Mokbel was then driven in two hired vehicles.

He disappeared from Melbourne while on trial in March 2006, and was arrested by Greek police in Athens on 5 June 2007.

Since being brought back to Australia he has remained incarcerated.

Mokbel was born in Kuwait, where his Lebanese parents were expatriate workers.

The family soon returned to their small village in Lebanon.

His family were part of the country's Christian minority and chose to leave the country following sectarian conflict in the lead-up to the Lebanese Civil War.

Mokbel and his family moved to Melbourne when he was eight years old.

They settled in the suburb of Brunswick, with his father working at the Ford factory and his mother at a meat factory.

He spoke no English upon arrival in Australia and struggled at school, attending St Margaret Mary's Primary School, Brunswick High School and Moreland High School but was a keen Australian rules football player.

Mokbel's father drowned at Bondi Beach in Sydney on his 16th birthday.

He would later reflect that this left him "dirty on the world" and led to him dropping out of school.

Mokbel had no criminal record prior to his father's death; a psychological profile completed following his incarceration concluded that this was a defining moment in his life.

Having left school, Mokbel began working as a dishwasher at a nightclub.

He took various other jobs in the next years, before purchasing a milk bar with his wife aged 19.

Together with his brother, he bought a pizza shop three years later, and would own and operate many other businesses throughout his career.