‘All right,’ said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
‘Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’ thought Alice; ‘but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!’
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Mokbel stood accused by the Runner of bankrolling the execution of a man before his child’s disbelieving eyes. But to children whose parents Mokbel liked, Tony could be doting and kind. ‘He’s caring and he’s kind and he loves children … My kids love him. He’s just so kind to any kids,’ Roberta Williams said.
Mokbel had dozens of godchildren and, shacked up with Danielle McGuire at his Southbank penthouse, he was a father figure adored by McGuire’s daughter, Brittany. It was there the quasi-nuclear family held a party to ring in the new year of 2006 so Tony wouldn’t breach his 10 pm curfew. Few knew at that point, possibly not even Tony, that it would turn out to be a farewell party.
In early March Mokbel met his leggy lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson for lunch. Police believed that at their repast she passed him more than the salt. An Australian Federal agent told the Supreme Court that police suspected Zarah tipped Mokbel off to impending murder charges. Defence lawyers had been provided with a killer’s statement implicating Tony and Carl in a gangland hit. Joining the dots it was clear a murder charge was imminent for Tony.
‘A statement had been provided to this effect and is suspected to have been made available to Mokbel by his former solicitor and former girlfriend Zarah Garde-Wilson,’ AFP Agent Ragg said.
Zarah confirmed the lunch but denied tipping Tony. ‘I wasn’t acting for Williams or Mokbel at the time. I wasn’t in possession of these statements,’ she said.
On St Patrick’s Day 2006 prosecutors, in a prescient move, begged once more for bail to be withdrawn because the cocaine case against Tony was so strong. There was no mention of Mokbel being increasingly in the frame for one or more of the gangland killings, despite Victoria Police the same day telling the feds they planned to arrest Mokbel for murder. Federal investigators were willing to introduce the Victoria Police information, but prosecutors were unwilling to lead evidence before the judge that was technically hearsay of hearsay.
Justice Bill Gillard denied the application. He said the conditions on Mokbel’s bail prevented him being a flight risk. Being a Friday the court then retired for the weekend. That Sunday at 5 pm Tony walked with Danielle to the South Melbourne police station to check in according to his bail conditions and the pair retired to their top-floor inner-city penthouse apartment.
The following day, Monday, at 10.30 am everyone arrived back at court. Mokbel’s lead defence barrister, Con Heliotis, QC, appeared. He made a simple but resounding five-word statement to the judge that would rock the nation: ‘We don’t have Mr Mokbel.’
Fat Tony had left the building. And a political firestorm would erupt in his wake.
Was he dead, drunk or deliberately departed? Mokbel’s lawyers cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that their client had done a runner. Tony had met with foul play from enemies before, they said. And in the bullet-riddled city a month after the killing of Condello, it was a prime possibility that Mokbel had simply become the latest smoking corpse. But the more anyone thought about it the more there was only one inevitable conclusion about the fate of the criminal chancer who had played the system like a violin and seemed to have a thousand second acts. While diligently appearing for court, checking in with police twice a day and keeping to curfew, Mokbel had always kept one eye on the horizon.
A police delegate was dispatched to tell an irritated Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland the bad news of Mokbel’s departure.
Later, as Chief of Police, Simon Overland told the author: ‘[They] came and told me that he’d gone. There was nothing we could do about that so we just had to work out what we could do. My initial reaction was obviously really annoyed but then we pretty quickly thought through what that could then allow us to do.’
Overland still fronted the public to talk tough to the prodigal perp: ‘You can spend five years on the run. That’s fine. We will find you eventually, and we will bring you back to face justice.’
AFP Agent Jarrod Ragg told the Supreme Court: ‘Mokbel is the head of a Lebanese organised-crime syndicate based in Melbourne. Mokbel has sufficient contacts and financial resources to support a fugitive lifestyle overseas.’
Ragg also told the court that Mokbel and Zarah had been involved in an amorous affair. There was speculation that it was a ruse to provoke Danielle’s envious rage so she would attempt to contact Tony and give police the lead they so desperately needed. ‘I was answering questions asked during cross-examination. The fact that the questions were asked was not by design. But it would have been advantageous to us if Danielle had have decided to take umbrage and speak to Tony about it,’ Ragg said.
If alive, where in the world was Fat Tony, a Kuwaiti-born Arabic speaker from a Lebanese family, hiding? In Lebanon, Mexico or Dubai? Theories abounded, including that he left the country and slipped into the Middle East disguised as a Maronite priest. As the horrible truth sank in for the authorities, rattled top cops and lawyers entered a public spat over who was at fault. Police blamed bail-happy judges as being fundamentally naive about the criminal character. Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland, a law graduate, questioned the need for committal hearings and said some lawyers were silent partners in crime. He highlighted that nine of the gangland victims were on bail when killed and four of the suspected hitmen were on judge-granted bail when they committed their murders. Judges and lawyers returned fire, pointing out that it was inquiries into police corruption that had delayed Mokbel’s prosecution to such an extent he could no longer justly be kept behind bars untried.
Police Minister Tim Holding said he wanted Mokbel brought to justice. ‘We want to see him serve his time in jail. We want him to pay his debt to society. And that’s why we want him found as quickly as possible,’ he said. But many were wondering: why had Mokbel spent more than three years on bail then flown the coop at the eleventh hour in his cocaine trial? The logic of his vanishing act seemed to lie in the fact that the judge might not have known police were looking at Mokbel’s gangland activities but, after his lunch date with Zarah, Tony apparently did.
Mokbel later said he fled after a tip-off ‘on the street’ that he was about to be charged with murder. He also candidly elaborated on his disappointment at sometimes not being a better crim. ‘I wasn’t worried about the drug case. I knew I was going to be doing serious time, like double figures, so the jail was not a worry,’ Mokbel said. ‘I wouldn’t even have been convicted on the drug charges if I hadn’t been stupid and talked about the strategy of our defence on the phone to some mates. It’s my fault. I’m stupid, and I know that a few times I said on the phone, “Things went well today, we’re going to win and this is why …” The police were listening to my calls, it’s my own fault, I should have known that, in fact I did but I was just careless.’
The jurors in Mokbel’s cocaine trial were told a warrant had been issued for the arrest of the man who was supposed to be in the dock but that the trial would proceed. All evidence had been led and there were only closing legal statements to go. But Mokbel’s legal team of Heliotis, Nicola Gobbo and Michael McNamara said they were going to withdraw as they could not possibly continue without their client.
It had already been a rough month for Justice Bill Gillard. The judge had declared Mokbel no flight risk only three days before he became the nation’s most wanted fugitive. Gillard just wanted to sail his criminal trial sans criminal through to the finish patched up with string and wire. And now the defence team was threatening mutiny. In polite but firm legal language the judge suggested the defence’s premature evacuation was a bad idea. It could be regarded as a cynical set-up for a retrial in the event that Mokbel was found guilty and ever actually found. The defence team listened to the judge’s strong words, contemplated them, and then walked anyway.
The jury took ninety minutes to find the absent Mokbel guilty over his Mexican cocaine import. He was convicted of knowingly being concerned in the importation of almost three kilograms of cocaine. The empty dock was sentenced to twelve years with a minimum of nine. Two federal agents soberly shook hands over the pyrrhic victory.
The authorities’ embarrassment worsened after Danielle McGuire publicly left the beauty salon she was running with Renate Mokbel and headed overseas. After Tony vanished his connections had squirrelled her $60,000. Less than four months after Mokbel disappeared, Danielle, with daughter, Brittany, and carrying her and Tony’s baby in utero, flew out of Melbourne. As she did so she flamboyantly told of her passion for the missing Mokbel and backed his criminal escapades. ‘You can’t help who you fall in love with … I’d rather Tony out there somewhere than sitting in a cell,’ she said.
The federal police followed in hot pursuit. An AFP spokeswoman said: ‘From our perspective, we’re not aware of any Commonwealth offences so she’s free to travel, as would be any citizen. You can’t stop people from travelling.’ In truth authorities, already scouring the globe for Mokbel, were ecstatic. Danielle would ultimately lead them straight to Tony, they thought. All they had to do was not lose one pregnant, ex-Collingwood druggie travelling with eleven-year-old daughter, Brittany, in tow. How hard could that be?
Just weeks after Mokbel vanished Justice Gillard – the judge whose name would forever be entangled with that of the criminal he let get away – sentenced Mokbel’s corrupted lackey Pizzaboy for speed and ecstasy trafficking. ‘I have seen enough of Mokbel to know that he is a very engaging person; friendly, determined and cunning,’ the judge said.
You could sense Mokbel’s self-impressed grin still lingering. But it was a grin without a cat. The cat was long gone.