Drug boss faces long stretch in prison

File photo / NZ Herald

More than six years after drug lord Tony Mokbel fled Australia to avoid prison, justice will finally catch up with him when he is sentenced this week.

Mokbel, 46, faces spending several decades in jail after pleading guilty to three serious drug offences.

As part of a plea deal, prosecutors say Mokbel, who is already serving a 12-year sentence for cocaine importation, should face a maximum sentence of between 26 and 29 years.

The Victorian Supreme Court sentence is the final chapter in one of Australia's longest-running and most colourful criminal cases.

In a rare event for a criminal case, Mokbel's sentence will be streamed on the internet.

Mokbel built and controlled a drug manufacturing and trafficking empire that turned over tens of millions of dollars from the mid-1990s until 2007.

In 2006 he fled a drug trial a few days before it was due to finish to hide out in a farmhouse in the Victorian country town of Bonnie Doon, before taking a yacht from Western Australia to Greece.

Mokbel was eventually arrested at an Athens cafe in June 2007, wearing a wig.

At a pre-sentence hearing in May, Justice Simon Whelan described him as "absolutely incorrigible".

Mokbel expressed remorse through forensic psychologist Wendy Northey.

"I have a lot of making up to do," he told Northey during one of their recent sessions.

"I won't be going anywhere near drugs again."

Mokbel said he felt "saddened by it" and recognised drug dealing caused damage to "a lot of people".

Prosecutor Peter Kidd, SC, did not accept the submission, saying it flew in the face of Mokbel's history of persistent and calculated drug-related offending.

"The matters for which he now purports to express concern and remorse would have been obvious to him at all times during the course of his protracted offending," he said.

Whelan will hear some final submissions from lawyers today before sentencing Mokbel at a time to be fixed.

- AAP