The Gangland War by John Silvester

1985 and 2001. Clearly, credit officers were not prepared to ask too many questions of the ‘property developer’ with the flash clothes and the big dreams.
    Mokbel was the drug dealer from central casting. He bought a top-of-the-range jet ski and was a regular at marquees at the Grand Prix. He once managed to get not one but two personally signed Ferrari caps from champion driver Michael Schumacher. The speed producer loved fast cars, fast horses and life in the fast lane.
    He left his wife and in late 2000 began an affair with Danielle McGuire, who ran a Mokbel-owned South Yarra beauty shop. But she was not the only woman in his life — he apparently believed monogamy was a board game for bored people.
    He’d been living with McGuire when he was found to have disappeared on 20 March 2006 — days before his cocaine trial was due to finish. Oddly, McGuire was unable to assist police in their enquiries about the whereabouts of her once-constant companion. But in the last days before he flew the coop, the lovebirds were not living in sin. Mokbel’s divorce from Carmel had finally come through. His long-suffering ex-wife was either extraordinarily naïve or born with no sense of curiosity. In court documents she swore she had no idea of her husband’s prodigious criminal activity during their married life. In other words, Carmel claimed she was a Patsy.
    McGuire was no stranger to police investigations — she was the ex-girlfriend of Mark Moran, the drug-dealing standover man murdered on 15 June 2000. She was truly unlucky in love. But with Mokbel she had the million-dollar lifestyle, living in a massive city apartment and dining at the best restaurants.
    When Mokbel was arrested, he was living in a Port Melbourne bayside penthouse he rented for $1250 a week. He told friends he planned to buy the property. He would never have the chance. Not that his lifestyle suffered. He moved into the four-bedroom apartment in Southbank with panoramic views of Port Phillip Bay, which was a world away from his previous address — a onebed cell in Port Phillip Prison.
    But Tony, the former suburban pizza shop proprietor, never lost his common touch and loved nothing better than to snack on a Capricciosa.
    He was a well-known customer and generous tipper at the city’s up-market pizzeria — Sopranos, naturally.
    Sopranos manager Frank Sarkis was quoted as saying: ‘He came for breakfast, lunch and dinner and his favourite meal was medium-rare eye fillet steak topped with prawns and smoked salmon — about $50.’
    When Tony wanted to snack in the privacy of his own home the restaurant would send over platters of pasta and pizza to the penthouse.
    â€˜My staff described it (Mokbel’s penthouse) as something so beautiful they had only seen anything like it in movies,’ the restaurant man said. ‘And money was no object. He’d regularly spend $200 a night on pizza and pasta. The staff cried (when Mokbel absconded) — he was a big tipper, $100 bills.’
    IT was not through drug dealing or shady business dealings that Mokbel first started to develop a questionable public profile, but through one of his other great passions — gambling. In later years, with nearly $20 million of his assets frozen, he took to describing himself as a professional punter, even though he was banned from racetracks and casinos as an undesirable person.
    For years, Mokbel was the type of heavyweight punter who used inside information to tip the odds his way. He was the leader of the notorious ‘tracksuit gang’ — a group responsible for a series of suspicious late plunges on racetracks in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
    His team once won $500,000 and demanded to be paid in green $100 bills, after lodging the bets with the older grey notes, in what was clearly a money-laundering exercise.
    Some bookies refused to take credit bets for Mokbel because he was often forgetful on