KEY POINTS:
The good life in the Mediterranean is not so hot for Big Tony now. This week a Greek court ordered the extradition to Australia of Kuwaiti-born Antonios Sajih Mokbel, Melbourne drug czar, alleged murderer and, until his arrest at an Athens coffee shop last year, international fugitive.
At
home, some of his closest associates are dead, victims of the brutal gang war that killed 29. Others of his family are in jail or facing trial. Much of the fortune he accumulated in more than two decades of crime has been frozen. And if he is returned to Australia he will almost certainly spend most of the rest of his life in prison.
His chances of avoiding this fate are extremely slim. While five serious corruption and drug-related charges will have to be dropped under the terms of Australia's extradition treaty with Greece and the Greek Government has yet to sign the order for his return, there is now no further avenue of appeal in Athens.
Mokbel's only hope rests with a possible appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, most likely based on the argument that given the publicity surrounding his case he has no prospect of a fair trial in Australia. But even without the charges now pending, Mokbel has already been convicted of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to nine years' jail.
Mokbel is the last of Melbourne's underworld kingpins to fall, caught after more than a year on the run and a trail that led through Europe and the Mediterranean, which diverted to probably untrue reports of a gun battle with unhappy associates in Lebanon, and followed - then lost - his girlfriend on a tour of tourist hotspots.
On the run, Mokbel is alleged to have smuggled A$20 million ($22.7 million) out of the country, left his sister-in-law to face two years' in jail after she could not raise the A$1 million surety she had guaranteed for his bail and to have still managed business from afar.
His legacy, beyond his immediate crimes, has included corrupt police, an investigation of the Victorian racing industry, new laws restricting the access of known thugs to the state's casinos, and a network of associates rolled up by investigators.
Among the collateral damage was Kelvin Thompson, formerly Shadow Attorney General in then Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's frontbench. Thompson wrote a glowing reference for Mokbel when he unsuccessfully applied for a liquor licence - a damning error of judgment that came back to push him out of the shadow cabinet.
Big Tony has left a large mark on a city notorious for its gangs and thuggery.
Antonios Mokbel, 42, went off the rails early in life. At 18, two years after his father died, he left school to work as a dishwasher and record his first conviction. Within four years he had notched up another 11. By 1992 the total had risen to 19.
In the meantime he bought and sold a milk bar in the north Melbourne suburb of Rosanna, took over an Italian restaurant in Boronia, on the city's eastern fringe, and married his wife Carmel, with whom he had two children.
But behind Mokbel the restaurateur was Big Tony, emerging mobster. In 1990 Mokbel and two others were caught in a police sting operation trying to bribe a County Court judge with a combination of cash and drugs.
Mokbel was jailed for 12 months for attempting to pervert the course of justice - a sentence that caused the collapse of his restaurant. But he had made new and more prosperous contacts: police surveillance of a bikie amphetamine gang indicated Mokbel had become a key supplier.
In 1993, an explosion at a Brunswick house revealed a drug laboratory that had produced methylamphetamine with an estimated street value of A$78 million.
Mokbel was implicated but never charged. Five years later he beat a drug manufacturing charge on appeal by successfully arguing that he had in fact been discovered with pseudoephedrine, not amphetamine as alleged.
But investigators were closing in. Informers told police Mokbel had been involved in the importation of 500,000 ecstasy tablets and enough pseudoephredine to make A$2 billion worth of speed.
Phone taps and forensic evidence tied Mokbel to that crime - but even more was in store.
Surveillance caught Mokbel boasting of an impending cocaine shipment from Mexico, to be smuggled in with the help of a corrupt manager of courier company United Parcel Service.
Mokbel and his associates were caught in a subsequent sting operation and charged with involvement in the importation of cocaine. He was also charged with trafficking in ephredine, LSD, ecstasy and other drugs. Police opposed bail on the grounds of his record and the likelihood that he would bribe police and have evidence destroyed. Bail was nonetheless first granted, then revoked.
As it was, a web of corruption uncovered in the Victorian Police saw the trafficking charges adjourned indefinitely and, with no prospect of an early trial, Mokbel was finally released on A$1 million bail on September 22, 2002. Three years later, because of police corruption, all but three trafficking charges were dropped.
Yet even while on bail police allegedly taped Mokbel arranging to import more drug-making chemicals. This time he was charged under federal law - yet, again, was released on bail.
This was a grave mistake.
Investigators had been pulling together the evidence to implicate Mokbel in two of the underworld murders that had rocked Melbourne: drug dealer Michael Marshall and Lewis Moran, patriarch of one of Melbourne's most notorious crime families.
Mokbel, who is alleged to have had a well-established pipeline into the police, was tipped off. Among those suspected of slipping Mokbel the news was gangland lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson, also reported to have slept with the drug czar. Garde-Wilson, now appealing the loss of her licence to practise law - cancelled because she was deemed not a "fit and proper person" for the profession - has denied both allegations.
Regardless of who warned him, Mokbel did not waste time. He fled the country, leaving behind assets that reportedly included a brothel used to launder money, 38 various businesses, a market site bringing A$500,000 a year in rent, property developments, interests in restaurants, cafes, shops and a nightclub.
His Brunswick home was worth A$1.5 million. He owned a stable of cars, including a Ferrari and a Mercedes. All have been frozen, and Mokbel was convicted in absentia of cocaine smuggling.
Mokbel has also caused embarrassment in the Victorian racing industry, maintaining close contacts and continuing to pour millions through the State's racetracks despite bans imposed by the Victorian Racing Club.
Last year an investigation was launched into his links with the industry.
Mokbel, meanwhile was living a high life in Greece, joined by his girlfriend of seven years, Danielle Maguire, who evaded surveillance as she toured through Europe. Reportedly, Maguire waved at her pursuers before she vanished, surfacing in Greece only after Mokbel had been arrested on a tip-off from Australia.
This week the Supreme Court in Athens ruled that one charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and four others relating to drugs could not proceed because there were no Greek equivalents.
Under the extradition treaty this means they cannot be pursued in Australia.
But unless there is a last-minute reprieve, Mokbel will be sent home to face the remaining 15 charges, including two of murder.
The high life is over.
