The Gangland War by John Silvester

account was Emido Navarolli, a close friend of Mokbel’s. But the bookie has admitted it was Mokbel and one of his associates who placed the bets and never the mysterious Navarolli.
    Just two weeks after the drug trafficker disappeared, Navarolli returned a $500,000 Mercedes once used by Mokbel to a car yard, as it was surplus to requirements.
    On 17 August 2005, Mokbel gave evidence before the Australian Crime Commission that his gambling winnings were paid into a bank account at the South Yarra branch of the ANZ bank under Navarolli’s name.
    Two days later, the Office of Public Prosecutions took out a restraining order to freeze the funds under assets-of-crime laws.
    Mokbel liked to give the impression he had inside information but his betting was wildly erratic. One rails bookmaker claims tohave won nearly $6 million from the drug dealer over several years.
    Another said Mokbel once invited him to a Port Melbourne coffee shop, within walking distance of the drug dealer’s bayside penthouse, to collect $80,000. He recalled they walked to Mokbel’s car, where the trafficker opened the glove box. ‘There was at least $300,000 there,’ said the bookmaker, who is used to judging the worth of large bundles of cash. Mokbel handed over the required notes to square the ledger.
    The big punter did not mind the occasional big loss. He was trying to launder drug money into semi-respectable gambling revenue that could not be seized as assets of crime.
    While Mokbel appeared to have almost unlimited funds to bet, some bookmakers were not prepared to allow him credit. One claims Mokbel refused to pay a $1.8 million debt run up on credit bets. Another was owed $60,000 — Mokbel rang and declared he had placed a $10,000 winning bet on a six-to-one shot on the last race in Adelaide. The bet was non-existent but the bookie realised it was pointless to argue. He wrote off the debt rather than risk being written off himself.
    But the man who liked to describe himself as a professional punter did have strong ties with some of the biggest names in the business — who either didn’t know or didn’t care where their rich friend made his millions.
    In the months before Mokbel’s arrest in August 2001, police telephone taps showed the drug dealer had regular conversations with key players in the racing world. Up to seven racing identities, including three top jockeys, were recorded talking to Mokbel on the police tapes.
    In 2006, shortly after Mokbel disappeared, top jockey Jim Cassidy said he considered him a friend. ‘I’ve got nothing but respect for him,’ he told the
Herald Sun
in a frank moment.
    Not everyone was as charitable as Gentleman Jim.
    In 1998, racing officials started an inquiry into the Mokbel family’s ownership of horses. They found Tony and his then wife, Carmel, owned a string of gallopers. They also found the Mokbels tried to ‘give’ a horse to the wife of a leading jockey.
    In the same year, racing officials gave police a confidential report suggesting the Mokbels were dangerous, corrupt and out of control. One senior official was shocked when he was confronted by one of the Mokbel family and threatened just weeks after the information was passed to police. The official still believes the information had been leaked to the drug dealer.
    It was part of a pattern where Mokbel seemed to know about investigations into him only days after they had begun.
    In 1999, the Mokbels were banned from owning racehorses. It wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Tony still had a string of horses — he just kept them under the names of subordinates and associates. Sort of Trojan racehorses.
    Again it was his standard business practice. Place your assets under your mates’ names and collect later. Even after Tony’s eventual arrest in Greece in 2007, his brother, Horty, was named in a public controversy over the ownership of three-quarters of a brilliant