Victoria's highest court has overturned two of Tony Mokbel's drug convictions and ordered the gangland figure to face a new trial over alleged offending dating back two decades.
00:00Tony Mokbal has been fighting to overturn three convictions for serious drug trafficking offences known as Quills, Orbital and Magnum,
00:10arguing that he suffered a serious miscarriage of justice and that his prosecution was corrupted by the actions of his then lawyer Nicola Gobbo,
00:18who represented him while secretly passing on information to Victoria Police in what became known as the Lawyer X scandal.
00:25Now this morning at Victoria's Court of Appeal two of those convictions were quashed with Mokbal acquitted in relation to the Quills case
00:33were ordered to face a retrial for the Orbital matter.
00:36The third conviction Magnum was upheld meaning that conviction and sentence still stands and Mokbal's appeal was dismissed.
00:43Now in its summary judgment the court found that the failure of Victoria Police and the prosecution to disclose the conduct of Miss Gobbo to Mokbal
00:52Mokbal impugned the integrity of his guilty pleas. Mokbal had pleaded guilty in relation to those three matters.
00:58They say he was not fully informed of the circumstances and his pleas could not be attributed to a genuine consciousness of guilt.
01:05The court also held that Mokbal had established that there was a real question as to his guilt in the Quills and Orbital prosecutions but not in Magnum.
01:15Now Mokbal has spent almost 18 years behind bars. He was released on bail early this year.
01:21Today his bail was extended and will return to Victoria's Supreme Court later this month.
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