Back on terra firma the landlubber Mokbel brothers were about to pay for the sins of nautical Tony, plus a few they probably would have managed on their own. The police mission to demolish the supporting pillars of the Mokbel drug empire – the brothers – began in earnest in September 2005. Mokbel’s flight six months later simply intensified the authorities’ desire for a full house – the four Mokbel men behind bars.
When the feds came knocking in the immediate aftermath of Tony vanishing, the brothers played dumb. Horty felt that ‘Tony was OK in that no harm had come to him,’ while Kabalan hoped the disappearance meant Tony had fled as an alternative to being killed. Milad told police Tony would not have been the victim of foul play: ‘Tony did not consider he had enemies. He was honest in his dealings and would deal with people face to face.’ Either way Milad was not expecting his big bro back anytime soon. Four days after Tony disappeared Milad returned Tony’s leased $500,000 Mercedes-Benz coupe to the Southbank dealership around the corner from Tony and Danielle’s love pad. An acquaintance of Milad Mokbel said the bald brother told him after Tony took off there was a safety deposit box hidden somewhere in the city holding enough ka-ching to pay off all debts left behind.
The bond between the Mokbel brothers had been fired in the crucible of the loss of their father. Others may have called portly Antonios ‘Fat Tony’, but to Kabalan, Horty and Milad, he wasn’t heavy, he was their bruvver. Although one of the younger siblings, Tony had risen to the top of the family tree and led the brothers to a larcenous life of leisure. ‘He was more confident about what he was doing. The others were more apprehensive about getting involved,’ said Detective Sergeant Jim Coghlan. ‘But they got into it and away they went. They made fortunes and people made fortunes from them.’
Kabalan, Horty and Milad purportedly operated an oil company but authorities are sceptical as to whether any of it was legitimate business untainted by crime, laundering or extortion. Whenever the brothers were dragged before court, legitimate occupations would magically appear for them. Tony was a property tycoon, his lawyers would say. Kabalan came before the judge as a truck driver and former restaurateur. Milad was trying to bring home the bacon as a butcher at the Brunswick Market, and Horty listed his occupation on an affidavit as simply ‘businessman’. His silk explained he had an interest in a service station.
Others were less accepting of the whitewashed work histories. ‘These people don’t work. They don’t get up like we do at five o’clock and catch the train to work,’ said Detective Sergeant Jim Coghlan. ‘They wake up at eleven, do their business in the afternoon, gamble, then play cards all night. That’s all they do. They don’t have a job.’
Each of Tony’s brothers had their own focus in the empire, reflecting their own personality, skills and proclivities. Younger bro Milad was Tony’s partner in amphetamine production and a handy bit of muscle for contract enforcement. Horty ran drugs too but was also Tony’s man at the track. Kabalan, the eldest and most mild-mannered Mokbel, copped the odd jobs. Occasionally sibling rivalry would derail the smooth running of the family’s nefarious trade. ‘They had a lot of fights. They had a lot of brotherly bickering over certain chemicals or money. Maybe one was jealous he wasn’t getting enough,’ Coghlan said. ‘So they did follow their own paths at certain points.’
Milad, a bald beefcake with a two-second fuse, had looked up to Tony as a surrogate father since the pair lost their own while still teens. But Milad had surpassed his fraternal mentor when it came to aggression. Police who have had the pleasure of arresting the Mokbel boys over the years said Tony is the nice-as-pie country squire who goes quietly but Milad tends to fire up and throw around his fists and use his bulbous head like a demolition ball. Milad was the most involved in the family’s drug enterprises after Tony. His lawyer once said he had become a professional gambler after Tony introduced him to the ponies. But police said Milad was at the top of the tree and at the forefront of drug trafficking and manufacture in Victoria. Milad would scoop up as much as seventy per cent of a lab syndicate’s profit.
Milad and wife Renate’s Brunswick mansion was a hive of drug activity. A swimming pool had been built where Howden’s old speed lab had erupted in flames. And behind the yellow house’s closed doors and gates Milad would organise for his pure meth deliveries to be diluted, repackaged and onsold. Cash and loot from their drug running poured in so quickly the family home ran out of stooks to hide the incoming riches. In just three weeks Milad banked $25,000, writing ‘gambling wins’ on the deposit statements. Renate would put their wealth down to the sale in 2005 of a butcher’s shop, and her husband’s skill with a punt. ‘He was very lucky with his gambling. But how can luck last? That’s how I looked at it,’ she said.
When Renate’s uncle, Garry Gibbs, a mailroom worker, visited his niece and her husband for dinner the pair would thrust bags of cash and jewellery at him, which he buried in his Parkdale backyard. ‘There’s enough jewellery here to open a jewellery store,’ Uncle Garry would say to his niece.
Once Uncle Garry was handed a string shopping bag stuffed with cash pulled from a laundry cupboard. Milad’s laundry had been specifically set up for drug processing. Nefarious characters, like a man who had helped organise Jason Moran’s death, would pop into Milad’s laundry to collect speed, sometimes leaving the payment with Renate. Uncle Garry claimed Milad had pleaded about the cash and jewels: ‘Please take it home. I’m sick of my brothers borrowing money off me.’ The uncle claimed he believed his niece had been given most of the jewels at family gatherings in line with Lebanese tradition.
Milad, Tony and Horty had moved out to their own places but Kabalan was still living at home with Ma Mokbel when he was in his forties with a family of his own. He had been left the man of the family when Sajih died but this translated to getting the responsibilities while Tony assumed the role of boss. Sometimes in big families these things are decided in a factional vote to which the intended victim is not invited. Kabalan was either the most soft-hearted of the brothers to want the role of dutiful son to his ailing Arabic-speaking widowed mother or, if he didn’t want it but got it anyway, he was the one most easily strong-armed.
A psychologist described Kabalan as reserved, accommodating and submissive. Police concurred he had neither Tony’s manipulative charisma nor Milad’s vicious streak. ‘Kabalan – what Tony told him to do – he just went and did it, whether that be transport of drugs and stuff like that, he just did it,’ Detective Sergeant Jim Coghlan said. ‘Kabalan was definitely more hands on. Tony was the kingpin and everything just sprouted out under him.’
Kabalan had clocked up some priors for dishonesty and street offences, but both Kabalan supporters and those who wanted him jailed agreed he was a follower and submissive to little bro Tony. But if Kabalan was the big friendly giant of the bruvvers he was a Shrek with a shottie. The longarm was kept under the bed where he slept.
In 2003 Kabalan became the subject of an action-packed arrest when police bumped into him, literally, at a high speed. The dramatic confrontation occurred as police busted open a $6.5 million syndicate cooking amphetamines for Tony from a house in Rye in country Victoria. A team of one hundred police officers had been monitoring the drug ring’s actions for ten months. They would wait for the cooks to produce a large amphetamines yield then monitor it as it was delivered up the line. Nabbing any old skrote with the drugs would not do. Police wanted a Mokbel red-handed with a large amount of amphetamine. But the Mokbel heartland of Melbourne’s northern suburbs proved to be like a Bermuda triangle for police. Every time the amphetamines left the regional lab and entered Tonytown, anti-surveillance tricks and lucky breaks would conspire to save the Mokbels’ bacon.
Police threw a net over the area. Officers were strategically positioned on the expected route, monitoring places and players, and ready to pounce. The first time the delivery happened but not as expected and police missed it. A week later they got a second chance. Officers followed the drugs all the way to their ultimate destination but police believe they ‘got made’ – were recognised – as the package was taken into a Mokbel house, so they withdrew. Had they raided, they feared the drugs would be flushed and they would seize nothing but drug residue on empty plastic bags. Better to have the Mokbels dispose of the drugs and then doubt whether the police were really observing them.
On the third delivery police watched as a Mokbel cook placed an Officeworks box containing two kilograms of amphetamines worth $300,000 on the front passenger seat of a car being driven by Kabalan. Kabalan gunned his Commodore for a dash toward the Brunswick Street property where he lived with Ma. This time police were taking no chances. Idling nearby was a large four-wheel-drive packed with heavily armed Special Operations Group officers. The four-wheel-drive accelerated around the corner and met Kabalan’s vehicle head on. As the Soggies swarmed the crumpled Commodore and arrested its shocked driver, Kabalan told them: ‘I’m just the delivery man.’ Nobody was under the misapprehension that he was the criminal mastermind. ‘With Kabalan he was probably operating for the other two. It would be Milad or Tony’s gear and he was the goose doing the pick-up,’ ex-Purana chief Jim O’Brien said. ‘He was the oldest brother and the lowest on the IQ scale.’
Kabalan was charged with trafficking, and at Ma’s police found a fake ID and a stolen shottie under Kabalan’s bed. His silk told the court that yes, the delivery looked suspicious, but Kabalan didn’t necessarily know what was in the box. Kabalan was bailed and given permission to travel interstate for a sunny sojourn at the luxurious Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast. His days in the sunshine waiting for trial became months then years due to delays and industrial action at the police forensic lab.
The Mokbels may never have known the chance they missed to walk away from the busted Rye lab unscathed. A notorious associate of Williams later claimed to police that Carl, who was involved in supplying chemicals to the Rye endeavour, was tipped off about police closing in by an allegedly corrupt cop. The crim made a statement saying the cop said if Carl pulled out he wouldn’t get busted, but he had to let the Mokbels go down or it would be too obvious there was a police leak and questions would be asked.
‘Carl said that we had to let the Mokbels go down on it. I wasn’t very happy about this but Carl made me swear to him that I wouldn’t tell the Mokbels,’ the crim said. ‘Not even two weeks after this the lab was raided and Milad Mokbel was arrested.
‘Some time after the Rye cook was busted by the drug squad I heard from Carl that Milad Mokbel was whining and sooking in the interview room. [The cop] had told Carl that Milad was complaining about being pinched. I wanted to shit-stir Milad about being a sook but Carl wouldn’t let me because then Milad would know that we had a copper on the inside.’
Like Tony, Milad had been raided in the mega-swoop of August 2001. Raiding police had found more than $66,000 hidden in his mansion. But the charges were dropped after Paul Firth, a former drug squad detective and crucial witness, was suspended in the context of a corruption probe. The lucky break made a happy Milad the first beneficiary of the investigation into corrupt police destroying an entire prosecution case.
Arrested again the same year over Tony’s $11 million pseudoephedrine import, Milad’s luck held out. Despite his fingerprints being on a shipping document detailing the movements of a drugs container, the evidence was not strong enough to proceed. His lawyer crowed that Milad was now a free man. However, Milad had expensive tastes and he used his lucky breaks to return to the drug trade – lucky breaks that were rapidly running out.
Some have said Jim O’Brien’s time at the helm of Purana coincided with the most successful dismantling of organised crime in the history of Australian crime-fighting. When it was decided the Mokbel brothers needed to be put away properly, a skilled team and proper financing were allocated for the fight. Said O’Brien: ‘I called a team of people together and in that I actually had accountants, solicitors, taxation office people, telephone intercept monitoring people and criminal proceeds investigators all co-housed together in one location. For the first time we started seeing a communication crossflow and a bit of discipline in the organisation to the point where that much more information and intelligence was coming forward. There was an air of electricity when you walked into the room. There was no place for egos.
‘I was once a homicide detective so I can say this. There are a couple of things about homicide detectives. They wear the best suits, they don’t like getting them dirty and they don’t like doing any other sort of investigations except homicide. Well, we stopped that. We had homicide investigators, drug investigators, criminal proceeds investigators. It was seamless. No separation. One team.
‘It was my job to make sure the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed and there was no room to be left open for people to exploit and see those prosecutions lost. When you think that we monitored 328,000 telephone calls from September 2005 to July 2007 it’ll give you an idea of the level of work.
‘It was also the loneliest place on earth. In the two years I was at Purana I had hardly a night when the phone didn’t ring about every hour, hour and a half. I’d exist on three or four hours of sleep a night and catch up at the weekends.’
O’Brien had studied American policing and adopted the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s three-step approach of investigate, identify the players, then dismantle. American crime-fighters had struggled for generations against mob figures running drugs, including Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno. Purana had their own Fat Tony plus his three brothers to deal with. O’Brien: ‘Basically from September 2005 our vision was to investigate and dismantle – to a point from where it would never recover – one of the most significant organised crime groups not only this state but this country had ever seen.
‘In the past we might have gone out and had a look at a criminal and said, “This guy’s fairly active, let’s target him.” On this occasion we mapped out the whole organisation. We spent a great deal of our time doing nothing, just getting to know who was who, who was playing what part, and how we were going to dismantle in a strategic manner. So if something happened over here we could get a result over there which would deliver evidence and we would prosecute someone down the track.
‘It went into the hundreds and hundreds of people involved. It wasn’t four or five people. It was a matter of identifying them all and using coercive examination systems to get the evidence to allow us to pull the assets off them. So it was a bit more than Mr Plod just walking along and bumping over things – which is quite often the way the regular police do.’
After Milad’s second escape from the long arm of the law he organised a meth lab running out of Strathmore. The lab was hidden in a shop near a primary school and potentially exposed the little learners to toxic fumes. The lab was pumping out $1 million worth of drugs a week. But police were onto it and a month after Tony vanished, on Anzac Day 2006, Purana swooped in raids, grabbing Milad, two others, the lab equipment, drugs and $80,000 in cash. The operation’s cook had turned snitch for Purana and recorded the delivery of a parcel of drugs, switched for harmless powder, to Milad’s mansion. The drugs were fake but Milad sniffed the package and exclaimed ‘beautiful’. Milad paid $88,750 for the drugs and boasted he had enough chemicals to make himself $1 million in two months.
Officers arrested Milad in his driveway. He was also in the gun for charges relating to the Rye lab that had led police to bump into Kabalan years earlier. Milad’s property was already spoken for as Tony’s bail security but Milad’s silk said Ma Mokbel was willing to put up the family home as surety. This time, though, there would be no bail. Milad was still fighting but he was doing so from jail. For police it was one down. The first brother was behind bars.
‘The overall plan was the whole organisation and that included the brothers and their extended family,’ O’Brien said. ‘A lot of the assets were concealed. It was fairly widespread. There were wives and relatives and distant relatives but that’s the nature of organised crime. We had all those either concealing, aiding in the concealment of assets by brokering or organising dodgy loans to hide or conceal the assets – creating camouflage.’
Authorities said that over the past twenty years the brothers had earnt their living from the drug trade, and with court approval they gleefully set about restraining Milad and Renate’s assets. Among the seized booty were two Mercedes-Benz cars, gold jewellery, Ducati and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, real estate including Milad and Renate’s Brunswick mansion, large-screen televisions and $116,000 in cash. The big freeze of dodgy Mokbel assets exceeded $50 million and came to include an additional $15 million worth of mining shares allegedly belonging to Horty.
The Mokbel wives, who had kept many assets in their names and out of the hands of prosecutors, also came under scrutiny. ‘We had the sisters-in-law all party to it, living off it. They were having cosmetic surgery done. All paid for by drug money,’ O’Brien said.
In November 2006 Horty’s wife, Zaharoula, was arrested for fraudulently obtaining more than $2 million worth of loans and credit lines, including from Westpac and the National Australia Bank. With bright red hair and a vivacious fashion sense ‘Roula’ cut a flamboyant figure at the city courts. The mother of three had duped the banks, posing as a petrol station owner, oil company manager and freight company employee who was single, with no dependants and on a $250,000 annual salary. Roula’s lawyer argued: ‘The only reason she has been charged is her name is Mokbel. It is a penalty for the sins of others.’ Roula was bailed with reporting obligations including a perhaps Tony-inspired condition that she stay away from airports.
Just hours after Horty had supported his wife of twenty years at court, police arrested him in Sydney Road, Coburg, raided his Preston home and took him in for questioning. He was charged with a series of offences for his role in the drug ring that had already got Milad jailed. Horty was accused of regularly meeting a drug cook in a Coburg cafe to exchange drugs and money. Horty supplied the cook with chemicals to make twenty kilograms of drugs which he bought back for $40,000 per half kilo, police said. The cook turned informer taped Horty saying: ‘Have you got any gear? Can you put any aside for me or not? I’ll take whatever.’
Horty followed younger brother Milad into custody and, after prosecutors warned that he could use Tony’s escape route and unexplained riches to flee, he was refused bail. Already in custody when sentenced, Milad would get eleven years with an eight-year minimum for drug trafficking, stashing profits from crime, and blackmail.
When Kabalan’s case eventually got back to court in November 2007 he would put his hand up to a charge of trafficking. He would also admit to delivering ten litres of sulphuric acid to a drug cook, and aiding and abetting the drug-producing syndicate. ‘He is not a person who is a leader,’ his silk said. ‘He is a follower. He is introverted. He is a soft, gentle man still living at home caring for his mum.’
While still in Australia Tony had tried to help his big bro by pressuring the man who delivered Kabalan’s box of amphetamines to change his story. But the ploy simply backfired into a new charge on Tony’s slate – attempt to pervert the course of justice. Kabalan was jailed for a minimum of two years after the judge accepted he was guilt-stricken over devastating his wife, Anita, his three teenage kids, and Ma.
It seems the police were not the only ones who thought Tony was responsible for Kabalan’s demise. Kabalan said: ‘I mean, I’ve paid for me because of my brother but that’s another story. You understand? Because people have got their own opinion. That’s enough. I don’t need to go into it anymore.’
Whoever was at fault, the three Mokbel men were all stuck behind bars of Victorian prisons. They were now all in their forties, losing hair and fighting hard the paunchy ravages of middle age. But just like decades earlier when they were boys on the football field, the Mokbel brothers were still making an impression. When all three were locked up Milad and Kabalan were still being called to court, and appearing by video-link, on fresh trafficking charges. Purana meanwhile was getting court permission to grab more Mokbel-linked properties.
Police were happy to have caged the bruvvers. But one more was needed to complete the set.