I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.
– George Best
Towards the twilight of the Mokbels’ decades-long crime wave a defence barrister claimed the family’s notoriety had reached a point where they compared to noteworthy historical crims Ned Kelly and Squizzy Taylor. Portraying Horty, Milad, Tony and Kabalan by inference as a kind of meth-running Kelly gang for the 2000s is too flattering a comparison. But there are some superficial similarities between bushranger Ned and bigwig Tony.
Mokbel’s great escape and ability to remain at large, evading and outsmarting a massive manhunt while his legend grew, echoed Ned’s dashing feats. While at large both funnelled ill-gotten gains to ensure the loyalty of insiders who could dob them in. And despite their efforts both were betrayed by a member of their gang turned snitch. But that’s where the similarities stop.
Ned Kelly will always be hated in some quarters because police were killed in cold blood. But there are many who regard the Kellys as small-time crooks oppressed, harangued and pushed to breaking point by dodgy members of the local constabulary. Ned never got rich from his criminal efforts, instead distributing his stolen wealth to impoverished settlers. The Mokbels turned to crime out of boredom and greed and kept the riches for themselves. Ned believed in some things bigger than himself – intangible things like unswerving loyalty, and concrete aims like turning north-eastern Victoria into a republic. Tony, on the other hand, believed in Tony.
The Mokbel mouthpiece was much closer to the mark with the Squizzy Taylor comparison. Squizzy was described as a colourful and dapper figure who dressed loudly, and strutted through Melbourne’s courts, racecourses and theatres.
The striking similarities between the Depression-era spiv and new millennium crime boss don’t end with surface style. Joseph ‘Squizzy’ Taylor liked to sell cocaine and hang out at the track. He had an unflattering nickname foisted upon him (after a squinty, ulcerated eye). He dabbled in prostitution and profited from selling drugs and fixing horseraces. Like Tony, Squizzy dodged several convictions over serious crimes for which he should have gone down. And he ran a lucrative jury-rigging business and boasted of subverting the justice system.
Like Tony, Squizzy was a principal figure in a Melbourne gangland war that broke out between rival crime clans. Several men were shot in the underworld upheaval but Squizzy emerged at the end unscathed. He also thought nothing of having someone killed if they stood in his way. After being caught by police he was charged but fled, became a fugitive, and eluded police for a year.
It remains to be seen whether there will ever be a pub named in Tony’s honour, as there has been for Squizzy. More likely somewhere along the line a still-loyal associate will name a racehorse Fat Tony, as has been done for Tony’s old speed contact Kiwi Joe. If authorities object we might see a more cryptic equine tribute like Achache Prince.
Mokbel always had a lot of names to choose from. He had been many things to many people and had a plethora of titles to show for it. He had started life as Antonios, which became Tony once subjected to affectionate Australian abbreviation. That became Fat Tony and, as his tentacles spread, he became in newspaper-speak the Octopus. Occasionally circumstances dictated others give him a different name, like when TV producers had to call him Mr B to disguise the notoriety of his real identity. Sometimes he had to change his name himself – to Yanni or Stephen Papas – to flee the consequences of his actions. But while the label might have changed the substance stayed constant. Whatever his nom du jour Mokbel’s criminal instincts and insatiable lust for scams and clams remained diabolically consistent.
From a young age Mokbel had determined his would be a life of opportunism. In fact he routinely asked if things were ‘dodgy’, using the word – different to most – as a positive adjective. If the response was that the particular person, product or scheme was dodgy, Mokbel would light up and want in. But while he was a natural born crim Mokbel would never have graduated to bigwig had he not, underneath, also been something of a talented businessman. The crime kingpin possessed two traits common to most self-made millionaires: an unwavering self-belief and a fearless gambling streak. But his most marked entrepreneurial trait was his scattergun approach to investment. It earnt Mokbel and those in cahoots with him a secret fortune.
It was not just pills and ponies, although on the latter one informed source said the Mokbels secretly controlled up to eight racehorses, greatly improving their ability to pick winners. Police suspected Mokbel secretly owned more than a dozen pubs and clubs. He and Milad had the run of some of Chapel Street’s most colourful after-dark venues despite their names not appearing on any documents. Nightclub insiders said the Mokbels were likely to have had an interest in scores more across Melbourne. Mokbel’s property speculation was so rampant that after he was jailed authorities were still untangling assets owned by his extensive network of contacts on his behalf. The extent of his brothel ownership and investment in the sex industry is also still largely unknown and the source of much urban legend.
As well as the big schemes Mokbel would jump into anything else: cheap suits off the back of a truck, business loans to fledgling enterprises, muscling into legitimate ventures, sending heavies to persuade people to transfer their liquor licence to him, loan sharking to hopeless gamblers, or a bet on two flies walking up a wall.
The drug trade is not without its slings and arrows. Police can threaten not just business but liberty. And rivals can threaten not just liberty but life. However, jail and the reaper aside, the ability to turn a large profit from drugs makes it much more of a no-brainer than real business. There is no red tape, no quarterly statements, no tax, no employee entitlements to pay, and the return on investment is incomparable to any legal product. There are also no consumer protection laws to worry about. If Tony had been in the canned-fruit trade and his product started making people as sick as The Company’s occasional poisonous yields, he would have been out of business. That said, Mokbel knew his industry and he knew it could make him money wherever, whenever. The high school dropout was also no minnow when it came to knowledge of the various complicated multi-step processes that can be used to create meth from more easily obtained chemicals.
If he spent the early part of his career dodging drug charges and denying he was a drug dealer, Mokbel dropped the facade once he was accused of being a killer. I’m not a killer, I’m a drug dealer, he would tell police. Mokbel was comfortable with the role. He was a drug lord the same way his uncle was a priest. It was what he did. It was his job. And while he waited for the world to catch up he would get on with his lucrative trade. Getting the stuff past objecting authorities just required extra cunning, skills and leadership, which Mokbel reckoned he had in spades.
‘He either doesn’t realise or doesn’t care about the health of the nation,’ Detective Inspector Bernie Edwards said. ‘I don’t think he really, really looks at drug trafficking as if “I’m killing all these people, I’m going to stuff the health system.” He just knows it’s lucrative.’
When Mokbel was living in disguise in Athens he made a phone call outlining a plan for a mass movement of drugs. Tony spoke of using fishing trawlers and making a mid-ocean transfer from one boat to another of drums full of drugs. The high seas plot was outlined by Mokbel just a week before he was arrested. Tony, it seems, was starting to set up business in Greece. It is less clear if he was being helped by Theo Angelakis or even Samsonidis. Whatever the case, the informer who brought him down, the Grifter, had laid a template for this kind of entrepreneurialism at large by establishing a global drug business while AWOL overseas. It is almost certain that had Mokbel not been arrested he would have established a Greek drug operation to run in tandem with his Australian syndicates. While in Australia Mokbel was constantly importing from overseas, but the boldness of going truly global while a wanted fugitive was both breathtaking and typical.
Only Tony Mokbel knows just how much money he made in his career. And perhaps, after all the dud bets, lobsters, loans and ladies, even he might struggle to give an accurate reckoning. Presented with estimates he would likely scoff and beseech ‘Turn it up,’ sticking to his public version of history that he’s a small-time crook. But the known record on Mokbel’s family syndicate says different. Fifteen million dollars worth of clean coal technology shares were frozen for allegedly being owned by Horty Mokbel. Milad has fought efforts to seize $5 million of his assets. And digging up Renate’s uncle’s yard reaped half a million in cash and jewels.
All up an estimated $55 million in assets have been seized from Mokbel and his associates by authorities. But trying to estimate Mokbel’s millions is like peering through a keyhole to calculate Aladdin’s booty. Purana’s taskforce Senior Detective Abigail Hantsis told a court: ‘For every dollar we have seized off the defendant and his family, we estimate that there is another $5 buried in someone’s backyard.’ The one-sixth-seized estimate puts the Mokbel fortune at a third of a billion dollars. This figure likely factors in assets police suspect really belong to the Mokbels but can’t prove. It may not include Mokbel assets that authorities have absolutely no idea about – what Donald Rumsfeld would call ‘unknown unknowns’.
Associates like the one who estimated that Mokbel made $100 million in the back end of his career were basing it on the operations they knew of. But not even Tony’s brothers knew all his investments and businesses. The Company thought that they were it, that they were Mokbel’s crew. But detectives said Mokbel did not just have The Company – he had Companies. He put individual members of importing, supplying and manufacturing crews together in an arrangement where only he could see the whole ant farm.
For decades Tony ran a number of meth-making syndicates, sometimes simultaneously, and imported almost every other type of illegal substance. Hundreds of millions of dollars would have passed through Fat Tony’s hands during his life of crime, sweetened by gambling wins from the tracksuit era onwards. Known drug yields connected to Mokbel cast some light on the scale of his earnings. After it exploded it was found that the Brunswick lab was producing drugs with a potential street value of $78 million. It is not known whether his Coburg and other labs beat that figure. His busted elephantine hash import would have been worth $147 million on the street. The Mexican cocaine import Mokbel considered barely worth it amounted to three-quarters of a million bucks. Police fear they missed a $50-million pill import and claim he took delivery of chemicals that could make $14 million worth of drugs.
We know Mokbel planned an MDMA import and claimed he could make up to $20 million worth of ecstasy pills in a short time. The Company was producing tens of millions of dollars of meth. The Rye lab could earn $560,000 in less than two days. Mokbel boasted at one point that he had chemicals to make him $1 million in less than two months. The Strathmore lab run by Milad was apparently pumping out $1 million of drugs a week. And the marina project the Mokbels tried to crash was worth $200 million. There were others but to continue the roll call makes the colossal funds involved just seem like Monopoly money. As well as these there are the drug imports that got under the radar and the clan labs that kept pumping out speed undetected. Factor in the family network’s cash flows that went unseen or got away, and the wealth involved becomes dizzying. Hundreds of millions stacked on hundreds of millions quickly add up to substantial fractions of billions.
The largest deal Mokbel was ever connected with was the ephedrine import. It placed him at the head of a $2,000,000,000 drug ring but the prosecution was ultimately scotched because of police corruption. The whole weird science of trying to quantify an illegal, paperless, deliberately invisible, multi-layered business run over decades can yield some truly terrifying figures for criminal profits. But the drugs and money that passed through Mokbel’s hands or control, not just what he managed to keep, must have gone a large chunk of the way towards making him a billion-dollar bigwig.
John William Samuel Higgs was consolidating his operations in the 1980s and by the nineties was reputedly behind the largest amphetamine ring in Victoria. When Higgs was near the height of his powers, as was seen in the taped dealings with Kiwi Joe, Mokbel was making his presence felt and working toward his own grand plan. Higgs went to jail after being busted by fallen drug detective Wayne Strawhorn, who was also close to Mokbel before he had him brought in. Until Mokbel stole both titles Higgs was the nation’s speed king and the last drug trafficker banned from the track by racing authorities.
There are plenty of ruthless, amoral, money-hungry criminals in Australia. Some struggle to get a stolen TV past the counter at Cash Converters. Few become multimillionaires. And almost none get to the level of wealth that Mokbel reached. The lubricants of Mokbel’s criminal success have been his charm, charisma and gift of the gab. Even now in prison where his sociopathic past is well known, and where he is attempting to harangue officials into better conditions through complaints, jail sources say their most high-profile prisoner is ‘renowned for being charming’.
Of course lovable Tony can quickly turn to ugly threats. But these have been an absolute last resort when faced by someone immune to his charm. The Grifter, Mick Gatto, ‘weak link’ Parisi, the Stooge and Milad’s cook turned informant are among those who have got the chilling impression Mokbel might suddenly have them knocked. Before third parties intervened, a female debtor feared for her safety after Horty personally threatened to harm her unless she paid up, an underworld source said. But for ninety-nine per cent of situations Mokbel could charm, spin, beg, lie or cajole his way to what he wanted. The best liars believe what they say. There is no room for self-doubt in this dynamic. Tony was in Tony’s corner arguing the case for Tony. And there is not a set of stark unflattering facts in existence that Mokbel would not attempt to spin in his own favour.
A good persuader knows that repetition, like a constant drip on a large stone, can wear the recipient down. It can even make the incredible seem credible. It is remarkable to go over the records of Mokbel’s responses at the only point in his life he was interviewed multiple times – during his custody and court walks in Athens. His responses, in the guise of the candour of the moment, such as the ‘we were all friends’ gangland war line, are almost identical quotes only slightly altered. The unflagging self-serving spin – it was a good wig, it just moved – coupled with his opportunistic criminality meant Mokbel’s motives for the most standard human endeavours would remain in doubt even after the Gospel According to Tony had been delivered.
The timing of his wedding plans was certainly suspicious. Tony had dated Danielle as a free man for years. The relationship continued while she served a stretch. But it was only once Tony was banged up in a Greek jail that wedding bells started to ring in our protagonist’s ears. Mokbel’s lawyer let it slip that the matrimonial plot was to improve his client’s visiting rights. But even when Mokbel admits an angle, it’s hard not to wonder whether the ostensible candour is not masking a different angle altogether.
For years Mokbel’s supporters said he was a property developer not a drug tycoon. Mokbel then said he was a drug dealer not a killer. He later said if he was going to have someone killed he would do it himself and not hire a hitman. When nabbed he said he was making plans to come back to Australia anyway. When nabbed he also said he planned to live out his days making an honest living in a kitchen in Greece. Mokbel said he fled Australia at the eleventh hour in his cocaine case because he was never going to get a fair trial. Once he was nabbed he apologised to Judge Gillard whose bail he breached but said essentially: Now I’m really not going to get a fair trial.
Mokbel told a female reporter he wanted to marry Danielle because every woman deserved that special day. But he then made no applications once moved from a Greek to a Victorian prison to reignite the matrimonial flame. Were the wedding plans a bid for sympathy from Greek authorities? Was the aim to improve their legal status? Was it, as stated, to gain prison visits? Or was it a few steps ahead – for sympathy from potential female Australian jurors?
Danielle getting pregnant when they last saw each other before meeting in Greece would normally be regarded as an endearing quirk of fate. But with Tony you always have to wonder: was it a Ronnie Biggs baby? Was it meant to help their status as Greeks in an emergency? What are the chances after years together that their last dalliance before Mokbel fled led to their first child?
There was some speculation the bub could be used to help the fix her dad was in. Experts said maybe but probably not. ‘It would raise the prospect of him making the argument that his removal from Greece would create significant difficulties for his family,’ said Australian National University professor Don Rothwell. ‘On my understanding … I wouldn’t see [Renate] as sufficient reason to refuse extradition.’ It does not clarify anything much but Tony said Renate was unplanned. ‘We didn’t plan it. It happened,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t aware of it until some months down the track. Danielle wanted to keep her. I’m glad, she’s a beautiful baby.’
The strange timing of baby Renate, if not planned, indicates Tony was less of a cunning plotter than the facts of his life would suggest – and more of a reckless chancer who got continually lucky. If planned Renate simply did not turn out to be the emergency magic jail key her old man might have hoped. And then while Mokbel was locked up in Greece, his empire crumbled. ‘That’s what it was about for us,’ Jim O’Brien said. ‘It was about pulling it apart brick by brick and just letting it crash around him. It was all planned.’
O’Brien has little sympathy for the adult Renate or the Mokbel women generally who, while their men are in jail, now linger among broader society like the last stragglers at a finished party. ‘They’re quite happy to [metaphorically] prostitute themselves and live off the back of it and have their kids live off it and all the rest of it,’ he said. Mokbel undoubtedly loved his kids, O’Brien said. ‘But then he’s quite happy to shovel drugs down your kids’ throats and mine as long as it’s not his own.’
For those who pursued him for years the rise and fall of the insatiable crime boss was down to pure pragmatism. ‘He ran a milk bar in Rosanna for a little while and that didn’t do anything and he thought, “Shit, there’s more to life than doing this,”’ Jim Coghlan said. ‘When you talk about Tony Mokbel to me, Tony Mokbel isn’t just a person. Tony Mokbel is a group. He had a company running for him.’
Agent Ragg was motivated during his seven-year pursuit of Mokbel by the simple thrill of hunting a good crook. ‘It’s about doing the job. You’ve got a crook. He’s a good crook. You’ve got a good brief on him. He’s a crook that’s worth putting the effort into,’ Ragg said. ‘There’s a lot of allegations from him that I made it personal. But it’s never been personal for me. He’s just a crook. That’s all he is. He’s a drug importer. And that’s as far as it goes.’
It seems every cop who has dealt with Mokbel has a slightly different view. ‘You’ve got to be careful with him because he’s not stupid but he’s certainly by no means intelligent,’ one, who did not want to be named, said. ‘He’s got a lot of street cunning. But he’s done some bloody stupid things.’
For authorities, criminal bigwigs like Mokbel are a clear and present danger not just to the public but to the public purse. According to Jim O’Brien: ‘The two greatest fears to any parent in this community today and repeated across Australia are simple. It is that your children will either, one, become killed in a motor vehicle accident or, two, they’ll end up using illicit drugs. What is the cost? Illicit drug use costs the state government $845 million a year. Some single aged pensioners would be very happy if they had that amount of money going to settle drug issues. One murder is costed out to the state at $1.6 million a year. We have probably between seventy to a hundred murders a year in Victoria.’
Fat Tony may end up behind bars for a long time, but caging him will not completely address the Mokbel phenomenon. ‘I think law enforcement can learn a lot about well-resourced and determined criminal organisations from an examination of the Mokbel organised crime syndicate,’ said Agent Ragg. Wealthy, cunning Mr Bigs with cadres of the best lawyers, corporate structures, and a war chest for corruption and extortion pose a serious if not existential threat to the justice system.
It can be striking how much heat and smoke can surround a criminal without ever combusting into actual convictions. Mokbel’s mate Lucky is the perfect case in point. His experiences in the crime world also underscore how fleeting life and death can be on the streets Tony inhabited. One of Crown Casino’s two hundred biggest gamblers, Lucky shared his friend’s passion for a punt and more than a little of Tony’s teflon coating when it came to dodging convictions. Police suspected Lucky was involved in Mokbel’s hashish and ephedrine imports that led to both of them being picked up in the August 2001 swoop. But Lucky emerged unscathed from his brush with the law. His ephedrine charges were dropped and he was found not guilty over the hash haul.
Lucky, who also had legitimate transport dealings, was regarded in drug importation circles as a very useful man for his little black book of dodgy dock and freight workers. But the danger and ruthlessness of Mokbel’s world became more starkly apparent in some of Lucky’s alleged later work. Police are still trying to establish whether Tony had any connection to these later drug hauls.
Lucky was arrested by the federal police in 2005 over an import of five million ecstasy tablets – or more than a tonne of the illegal drug. The crime had followed Tony’s modus operandi of hiding the drugs in a container of tiles and ‘piggybacking’ it through in a shipment registered to and bound for a real company. Lucky, unlike two of his colleagues, had not been caught red-handed with the drugs. He was purportedly bankrupt yet had recently lost $726,000 gambling. And while the drug case against him was not strong, the court noted that the bankrupt’s outlay of ‘astronomic sums’ at the Casino did raise questions. Ultimately the two removalists were convicted but Lucky and three others were acquitted and walked from court.
Lucky’s involvement with the justice system did not finish there. He was arrested in 2008 over a world-record ecstasy bust with twenty other suspects including Mokbel-predecessor Higgs and alleged members of the local Italian mob. Lucky was later charged over the importation of six tonnes of pseudoephedrine to make speed and ice, hidden in fruit juice cartons and smuggled from Asia.
The danger for bit players in Lucky and Mokbel’s drug world bubbled to the surface in the import of the five million ecstasy tablets over which Lucky was acquitted. One of the alleged helpers in that conspiracy was Antonio Sergi. During the trial the prosecutor claimed: ‘While Sergi is doing the hands-on work, Mr Lucky is effectively pulling the strings in the background.’ It seems some of the criminal bigwigs behind the scheme were concerned by Sergi’s arrest and particularly worried he would not keep his mouth shut.
Sergi was lured on false pretences to a Moonee Ponds park in the very early hours of a Sunday morning in November 2005. He was sitting in his vehicle – the favoured gangland trap as the car boxes in the target – when a gunman snuck up and fired three shots through the passenger window. The dispatch from a high-calibre handgun hit Sergi in the chest and both arms. Sergi played dead and when the assassin fled he drove himself, bleeding like a stuck pig, to the nearby police station for help. Miraculously he survived. He ignored police pleas to give evidence against his attackers, but staying staunch proved to be no invisible shield. Sergi became the subject of another bungled attempt on his life three months later.
Hitman Craig Bradley had been seen staking out Sergi’s Sydenham home and was suspected of heading there in a stolen car to kill his mark when he crashed into a nearby house. A concerned neighbour who came to the crash scene saw that Bradley had a gun and called police as he fled on foot. Two officers trawling the area recognised a man on foot in a leather jacket who fitted the description on their police radio. One of the cops got out of the squad car and shouted to Bradley: ‘Keep your hands where I can see them, I want to talk to you.’ But Bradley pulled his gun out and fired five shots at the officer, who dived back into the cop car as two bullets hit his boots and another grazed his shin. The police driver jumped out and trained his weapon on Bradley, who fired a shot at him, missed, and then fled.
Bradley was arrested later in a nearby street having dumped two sets of rubber gloves, a balaclava and the gun. When police searched him they found a piece of paper detailing Sergi’s address and number plate and a photo of the intended target with a cross drawn over his right eye.
Lucky’s links to matters of mortality did not end there. In March 2009 Purana detectives grabbed Lucky and Francesco Madafferi, his co-accused in the record ecstasy bust, as they left court. Lucky’s associates attacked, spat at and cursed journalists after he was arrested outside the court. The pair were questioned over two alleged murder plots due to have occurred in March and July the previous year, both of which were cancelled at the last minute. And Madafferi was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. But it seemed once more Lucky had dodged a bullet.
Most criminals pose little threat to civilised society because they are so easily caught red-handed. They can be found catching taxis to crime scenes, wearing super sheer pantyhose on their head to rob banks, using their credit card to hire trailers to move bodies, or in one case leaving severed fingertips – complete with actual prints – on a broken window at the crime scene.
Then there are the Tony Mokbels. They play the odds, pay top dollar to top lawyers and delay trials until something comes up. It’s not that they think they will never get caught, just that they are willing to do a bit of time here and there, spend a lot of their life living it up on bail, and in the meantime make millions from the constant manufacture, import and sale of drugs. They have the kind of criminal corporate memory that used to belong only to mafia-style groups: anti-surveillance techniques, walk and talks, assets in others’ names, and trading drugs in quantities just under the limit of what the law regards as a more serious offence.
The individual judicial decisions that helped Mokbel may themselves make perfect sense, but taken as a whole they beggar belief. Given the epic ambitions of drug syndicates like Mokbel’s it is reasonable to assume they will, as they have, continue their criminal activities while on bail. According to Jim O’Brien: ‘Organised crime is great at succession planning. During the course of Purana we saw that on a number of occasions where they had people they knew were going to jail due for sentence and out on bail who were actually teaching others how to manufacture drugs.
‘What’s going on with the Magistrates Court at Melbourne? Why are people like [a Mokbel drug manufacturer], who were large commercial quantity cooks, drug traffickers, released on bail? A day after [they’re] put in the boot of the car and driven to a major lab in Gisborne by Tony Mokbel to start cooking again. Why are these people on bail?’
Part of the problem appears to be the inability of a list of prior convictions to convey the reality of the danger of particular defendants being released. Mokbel’s career shows how a relatively short list of priors can mask a life of crime and a trail of jailed fall guys. Decisions like the one by the magistrate who released Mokbel while the Grifter was out (before a judge later corrected the mistake) also fundamentally jeopardise a working cog in the system – the ability of police to get criminals to feel confident enough to turn witness.
A senior police source who did not wish to be named said courts had been manipulated by lawyers who had forgotten their obligation to be officers of the court: ‘The court is utterly abused by barristers representing these people. Tactics of delay do nothing but weaken the prosecution but that’s what they’re all about. Witnesses against Mokbel were initially quite happy to do their civic duty. And as his notoriety increased and the gangland wars went on people were abjectly terrified giving a minor piece of evidence in a large case. They know the longer they drag things out the harder it is to prosecute. It’s all fair but I believe an abuse of process. There needs to be some consideration from the judiciary.’
Mokbel’s indefatigable attempts to bribe authority figures, including judges, could be explained as part of his character. Tony was an eternal optimist who thought everyone had their price. When his philosophy was threatened by someone who would not be bought he would change in a flash from charming to chilling. More ominously, Mokbel’s incessant bribe attempts could suggest at some point they were a success. Organised crime needs corruption to exist and prosper – and not just in the police force. Mokbel told crime colleagues he once paid a magistrate $20,000 for the right result. Mokbel could be a terrible skite but at least some of the time his big talk was matched by his big actions.
In the trenches at the front line of the war on drugs things are stacked fairly evenly. Savvy drug criminals who have good barristers and don’t use their product can make an easy few million without a great risk of doing time. Importers with cronies on the docks and with access to customs have brilliant odds. ‘There’s never going to be a recession in policing in Victoria or anywhere else. It doesn’t suffer a recession,’ O’Brien said.
Levelling the field for the good guys are instances of heavy financial investment and police leadership. Victoria Police dropped the ball on the underworld and the drug squad aided rather than suppressed the gangland war. But Purana is an international example of where thoughtful funded policing succeeds.
Also helping the forces of law and order are technological advances such as telephone intercepts – TIs – and the seeming inability of villains to watch what they say on phones they suspect are off. TIs have been like kryptonite to some groups in organised crime. Police are now racing the future to work out new and better ways to intercept email. Many crooks currently in jail around Australia might be enjoying the sunshine had they put down their beloved mobiles and visited an internet cafe instead.
But insiders say the fight against the major drug trade is fundamentally conflicted on two fronts. The first is belief. Drug policy is undermined by the reality that large swathes of society take or have taken illicit drugs like cannabis and ecstasy. In recognition of this police give well-behaved ravers paper fines and diversions when they are caught with ecstasy. It would be deluded to think all police were Elliot Ness-style teetotallers who live separately from the drug culture.
Experts say we need to establish whether there should be a war on drugs, and if so what drugs should be included. There need to be good health reasons to maintain the unenforced illegality of some drugs while legal drugs like alcohol are behind so much damage, and tobacco addicts are free to smoke cigarettes through tracheotomy holes outside public hospitals. But however imperfect our drug policy is, it does not mean jailed kingpins are political prisoners, as some seem to believe. The people at the top of the drug trade are very nasty characters. In poor countries and ghettos they prey on their local communities, rule by fear and kill to get ahead. Sometimes they insert cocaine in women’s thighs, sew them up, and force them to catch international flights in half-dead states. The best argument against buying drugs is not the sort we always hear but to personally boycott the monstrous actions behind the trade.
The second thing law enforcement insiders state is hobbling the fight against drugs is will. Once society arrives at a policy it actually believes in and decides where on the supply chain the war should be fought – for instance, heroin importers – then that war should be actually and seriously prosecuted. There is a smug view masquerading as informed worldliness that the war on drugs is unwinnable. That view assumes that a war has already actually been waged and funded with winning in mind, but there is a lot more that could be done.
Australia is an island. It is not like America with the drug cartels of Mexico on its doorstep and a porous border with Canada. Only one in twenty shipping containers are X-rayed by customs. Comprehensive international freight checks rather than rare random ones would make a difference. So would removing the convicted criminals, associates and suspects who bring the drugs and precursors from jobs at airports, wharves and transport companies. The right of suspected criminals to work on the wharves should not be confused with fundamental human rights like life, liberty, freedom of speech and freedom from tyranny. Even further inroads might be made if the system stopped eating itself with delays, granting bail to syndicate drug cooks and giving rich Mr Bigs taxpayers’ dollars in Legal Aid.
Ultimately there may be no barriers to kamikaze kingpins as relentless as Tony Mokbel. He was one of the most successful crooks that Australia has ever seen. Government posters warning of the dangers of ice now dot his old Brunswick stamping grounds, a legacy of the dangerous local industry he helped pioneer. Even as authorities clamped down on Mokbel’s properties in Noosa and elsewhere, he was seeking to keep them by ‘selling’ them to cronies who would deny knowing Tony. He survived a gangland war that put dozens to death and then was one of the last survivors to be jailed.
It has taken more than a decade to put the Mokbels behind bars, but for police the Tony Mokbel story has a happy ending. Agent Ragg said he won’t forget his years pursuing Mokbel. ‘There’s a lot of things learnt. Never give up. Professionalism and persistence. Just because it’s hard, don’t give up. The harder it is probably the more worthwhile it is,’ he said. ‘Things went on during those eight years that certainly shaped my career and taught me to be a better investigator.’
In the meantime we can only guess how many other little Tonys whose names we don’t yet know are working the courts and working their way up to bigwig. For them the romance of crime and the lure of easy money and outsmarting the authorities is probably as seductive as it was to Mokbel. But crims that get the luxury of living to an old age see things differently from the other end.
Billy ‘the Texan’ Longley was a convicted killer and union hard man in the Painters and Dockers war decades before Mokbel’s heyday. Longley and ex-cop Skull Murphy became unlikely mates and do presentations to at-risk students warning them about the grisly reality of a life of crime. The kids won’t take it from an ex-copper, but they listen to the spiel by the Texan when he delivers his toe-curling cautionary tale to the teen delinquents who might fancy themselves as the next Mr Bigs:
‘Listen, son. I’m an old criminal. If you want to be a criminal I’ll tell you how to be a criminal. I’ll tell you how to go and get a gun and put it to someone’s head, or how to rob a bank or do all these kinds of things. But remember this. You’re a good-looking young boy. You’re seventeen or eighteen and you’re going to go to jail. And when you get out to Pentridge or a place like that, because you’re so good-looking they’re going to put you down on the ground and they’re going to bloody well stick it up your arse. And you will be biting pieces out of the concrete kerbing. That’s what’s going to happen to you.
‘If you want me to tell you how to be a criminal after all that, I’ll tell you.’