Australia drug kingpin walks free after police informant scandal

One of Australia's most famous gangsters will walk free after prosecutors Friday said they would drop a planned retrial on drug trafficking charges.

Sixty-year-old Tony Mokbel — one of the key figures in Melbourne's years-long gangland war — was jailed for 30 years in 2012 after pleading guilty to masterminding an elaborate drug syndicate.

But his case fell apart after it was revealed that his high-profile lawyer at the time, Nicola Gobbo, was feeding information to police while supposedly defending her clients.

Mokbel spent about 18 years behind bars but was released on bail last April after a court ruled he had a strong chance of overturning the criminal convictions.

A court subsequently acquitted him of one charge and ordered a possible retrial over allegations he tried to import a commercial quantity of designer drug MDMA in 2005.

On Friday, prosecutors in the state of Victoria said they had decided not to pursue that planned retrial.

"This decision was reached after careful consideration of all aspects of the matter relevant to the prospects of conviction and the public interest in a retrial," the Victoria Office of Public Prosecutions said in a statement.

Prosecutors said they took into account Mokbel's age and health as well as time already spent behind bars.

"It feels really nice, and life goes on," the ageing mobster told local media outside a Melbourne courthouse.

And he said he was keen to go abroad, something he said he had dreamed about while in prison.

"It'd be great to get on a nice plane," he said.

Violence linked to Mokbel's group, known as "The Company", claimed dozens of lives and was later immortalised in the hugely popular Australian TV series Underbelly.

Gobbo — also referred to as Lawyer X and Informer 3838 — claims that over 300 people were arrested and charged based on the information she provided.

A 2020 Royal Commission found Gobbo's "double life" during a period of intense gang bloodletting in Australia's second-biggest city were "fundamental and appalling breaches" of her obligations as counsel to her clients.