Tony mokbel biography

Australian criminal (born 1965)

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. 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.

Early life

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

Jailed crime lord 'Fat' Tony Mokbel has spilled the beans on how detectives crushed his illicit empire at the close of the 'Underbelly War'. 

The former crime boss, who had ruled Melbourne's underworld through the 1990s and early 2000s, appeared before the Supreme Court of Victoria on Tuesday in an attempt to secure early release over the ongoing Lawyer X scandal. 

Dressed in a dark pinstriped suit and striped purple tie, the now 58-year old looked every inch the feared gangster he once was, complete with a facial tic that saw him snarl through his evidence. 

Mokbel appeared otherwise healthy despite years behind bars and a savage 2019 attempt on his life that saw him repeatedly shanked by prison rivals. 

During a hearing last year, it was revealed Mokbel continues to suffer a traumatic brain injury stemming from the attack and had been hospitalised for heart attacks. 

Insisting he stand up while giving evidence, Mokbel claimed he fled Australia in 2006 after receiving advice from disgraced lawyer Nicola Gobbo that he was about to be hit with three murder charges. 

Mokbel had already been looking down the barrel of a lengthy jail sentence at the time after being charged with serious drug trafficking offences. 

Purana taskforce detectives - the Victoria Police crew responsible for ending Melbourne's gangland war - had already gone about cr

Tony Mokbel, who has survived a stabbing attack in Barwon Prison, is one of Melbourne's most notorious gangland figures.

Born Antonios Sajih Mokbel on August 11, 1965 in Kuwait, he has spent most of his life in Victoria, where he became the mastermind of The Company — the elaborate, multimillion-dollar drug syndicate that would become a key factor in Melbourne's gangland war.

He became the subject of an international manhunt when, in 2006, he famously fled to Greece while on bail during trial for cocaine-trafficking charges.

Fifteen months' later he was discovered in Athens — wearing a comically conspicuous black toupee — and arrested again.

After a lengthy extradition process, Mokbel eventually fronted a court in Melbourne and in 2012 was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a range of serious drug-trafficking charges.

Turning points and a troubled youth

Mokbel moved to Australia from Kuwait with his Lebanese Christian family in 1974, when he was just eight years old.

The family settled in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, where Mokbel — who initially spoke no English — would struggle through school, and take up junior football.

As a youngster, he would accompany his mother to her job at a local meat factory every morning, while his father worked for Ford.

But Mokbel's life would change drastically on his 15th birthday.

His 50-year-old father suffered a heart attack and died, leaving a grieving and suddenly rudderless family.

It was a blow Mokbel would say left him "dirty on the world", and one he arguably would not recover from.

Mokbel subsequently dropped out of school. Arrested for the first time at the age of 18 — for a street brawl that resulted only in a fine — he would find himself in trouble with local police for a number of fights in his teenage years.

Despite his seemingly troubled path, Mokbel was offered the opportunity

Australian television limited series

Fat Tony & Co. is a nine-episode Australian television series focusing on Tony Mokbel and covers the manhunt which lasted 18 months and dismantled a drug empire. It premiered on 23 February 2014 and concluded on 6 April 2014 on the Nine Network. It is technically a part of the Underbelly franchise, with various actors reprising their role from previous series.

Production

Conception

Fat Tony & Co. has been marketed as a sequel to the first series of Underbelly, however due to changes in funding with Screen Australia it was not branded as an Underbelly series.Fat Tony and Co actually runs chronologically alongside of Underbelly, with the storyline being told from the point of view of Mokbel. The first few episodes chronicle his rise while the "Melbourne gangland war" is taking place, but the later episodes focus on his disappearance and arrest in Greece, and other events that unfolded after the original series of Underbelly concluded.

After a rumour in November 2012, Fat Tony & Co. was officially announced on 3 August 2013. Production for the series began on 5 August 2013.

Fat Tony & Co. was directed by Peter Andrikidis, Andrew Prowse and Karl Zwicky, with Jo Rooney, Andy Ryan, Peter Gawler and Elisa Argenzio Lambert serving as producers.

While most of Fat Tony & Co. was shot in Melbourne, some sequences were filmed in Athens, Greece.

Casting

Most of the cast from the first series of Underbelly return to play the same characters, although some were unavailable to reprise their signature roles, such as Kat Stewart who played Roberta Williams, (replaced by Hollie Andrew), Caroline Gillmer who played Judy Moran (replaced by Debra Byrne) and Callan Mulvey who played Mark Moran (replaced by Jake Ryan).

Cast

Regular

Recurring and guest

Episodes

Ser