Tony Mokbel's third-last public appearance

Tony Mokbel, the (suddenly self-confessed) drug kingpin, once the master of a crime outfit turning over hundreds of millions of dollars, a star of the Underbelly saga, once acquitted of murdering Lewis Moran, another murder charge earlier dropped, a big man on the horse-racing punter circuit -why, he looked in the back of the court like nothing more than a jovial uncle you might happily have around for a barbecue.

He nodded and smiled at reporters and a Purana Taskforce detective, and chatted amiably to three mates.

Yesterday, Mokbel was fading back into custody, no more than a figure on a video screen on the wall of the gorgeous Banco Court in the Victorian Supreme Court building, this time wearing a red tie. By afternoon, the screen was black.

This was to be Tony Mokbel's third-last public appearance, and with Justice Simon Whelan's permission yesterday, a return to the headlines.

While Mokbel was a court regular since his spectacular arrest in Greece in June, 2007, his absence from the media for the past two years can be traced back to a suppression order on all things Mokbel issued by Justice Stephen Kaye.

The blanket ban was made during his trial for the 2004 murder of Lewis Moran, to ensure jurors who eventually decided on Mokbel's drug charges would not be biased.

The order, issued long after prosecutors had dropped another murder charge - over the death of Michael Marshall in South Yarra in 2003 - remained in place even after a jury found Mokbel not guilty of Moran's killing.

The talk of murder charges is enough to make even hardened criminals wince and Tony Mokbel, one of Australia's most prolific drug lords, was no different. When he heard detectives were about to add two murder raps to his name, Mokbel skipped the country - and would not be found for 15 months.

Six months before Greek police nabbed him (wearing the now-infamous wig) in an Athens cafe in 2007, an Australian federal agent had told the Supreme Court police suspected flamboyant underworld lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson had tipped off Mokbel about a statement from a paid killer implicating him in the Marshall murder. Garde-Wilson has denied the claim.

When Mokbel failed to show at court one Monday in March 2006, during the last days of his cocaine importation trial - which would eventually see him jailed for 12 years in his absence - the justice system was left red-faced about losing one of its most-prized catches.

As he was facing serious charges, Mokbel was most likely to be sent to a remand prison when his trial ended, to await the jury's verdict. Smelling a strong chance of conviction, prosecutors had applied to revoke Mokbel's five-year bail the previous Friday and place him behind bars immediately. But now-retired Supreme Court judge Bill Gillard disagreed and Mokbel walked out of court.

As wild theories swirled about where the man dubbed Australia's most wanted was hiding, Mokbel swiftly abandoned the high life of fancy cars, flash penthouses and philandering and lay low for seven months on a remote farm in Bonnie Doon, near Lake Eildon, plotting his exit from Australia. He then shifted for a short stay at another rural property in Elphinstone, near Castlemaine, before being driven to the West Australian coast and boarding a dinghy somewhere between Perth and Geraldton.

Further offshore, the 17.3-metre yacht Edwena, complete with a luxury toilet built for its party of one, was waiting. For 40 days and nights, the length of the trip to Greece via the Maldives and the Suez Canal, the gangster known for his love of good food made full use of the facilities with violent bouts of seasickness.

When he disembarked in Athens on Christmas Eve, 2006, Mokbel stepped into a new life with girlfriend Danielle McGuire, and a new identity as Sydney businessman Stephen Papas. McGuire, who already had a teenage daughter from a previous relationship, would soon give birth to baby Renate.

Mokbel wasn't lying when he told locals he ran a business, but his interests were far from the property investments in Greece that he spoke of. He admitted this week what detectives had long claimed - that he was chief executive of ''The Company'' - a criminal cartel alleged to have grossed $180 million through the production of methamphetamines, between July 2006 and June 2007. Mokbel's trusted lieutenants are said to have transferred $400,000 to foreign banks so their fugitive boss could continue to live large.

What Mokbel didn't know is there was a snitch in his ranks. An unprecedented $1 million reward for information leading to Mokbel's arrest, announced a month after he fled, may have had something to do with it. While bermuda-wearing ''Fat Tony'' rented a fancy, $3200-a-month apartment and tipped well for regular lunches at trendy deli To Bakaliko in the Athens suburb of Glyfada, police were getting the skinny on his international business enterprise.

Even the best employees occasionally need direction and Mokbel kept check of his via a mobile phone that turned out to be ''hot''.

Mokbel gave regular instructions on the cooking of drugs and flushed the cash through bookies, casinos and the entertainment industry. Such was the quantity of money going through the system that the hundreds of thousands of dollars detectives seized during raids were simply written off as a business expense.

Mokbel's regular chats led police to Athens and, after several near misses, they finally caught up with the wig-wearing, moustached fugitive at the secluded Delfinia cafe in Glyfada. ''Stephen Papas'' wasn't fussed about what seemed like a routine passport check, but Tony Mokbel's jaw dropped when he saw a Purana detective. ''I don't know how you did it, but you've done a brilliant job,'' Mokbel told the investigator.

An early hint of Mokbel's willingness to cut a deal if the murder charges were dropped came in the form of a mobile phone conversation with the detective while he sat in a Greek jail ''not fit for humans''.

''I'm a drug dealer, not a killer,'' he told the detective.

In business, as in life, the Lebanese migrant from Coburg always chased a better deal.

Mokbel started off as a dishwasher at a suburban nightclub and by age 19 owned a milk bar. Three years later, he bought an Italian restaurant in Boronia. Other restaurant ventures followed and by 2000 Mokbel bragged he owned or controlled 38 different companies. There was the $18 million ''winged keel'' apartment development over Sydney Road and interests in shops, cafes, fashion, hotels, nightclubs and regional land.

''I'm the type of guy who drives the latest Ferrari,'' he boasted to a drug associate and indeed this was true - along with the latest Audi and Mercedes.

Before his prolific drug dealing became notorious , Mokbel gained public prominence at the racetracks and casinos - from which he was later banned as an undesirable person when $20 million of his assets were frozen.

For years Mokbel controlled the ''tracksuit gang'' - a group operating in several states that placed suspicious late cash plunges at racetracks. Mokbel was also banned from owning horses, but racing insiders believe his friends and family continued to buy horses for him.

Away from the track, Mokbel began as a small-time amphetamine cook. He quickly learnt to use middlemen in an effort to make it big in the drug world.

In 1997, following a fire at the Brunswick house, police uncovered what was then Victoria's biggest speed lab, an enterprise that produced drugs worth $78 million. Another man would serve jail time over it and never tell investigators he was doing the cooking for his mate Mokbel.

POLICE say Mokbel was one of the first major drug dealers to start pressing designer pills. Through a massive network that included rogue police, dock workers, distributors and others, Mokbel's activities were far beyond those of any of his criminal contemporaries.

The $2 billion tag attached to the street value of drugs that could have been produced from chemicals Mokbel imported in 2001 would have been enough to put him in prison for life.

Mokbel would ultimately reserve his plea on reduced charges relating to this drug importation due to a series of legal problems, but he never formally went to trial. Meanwhile, police had other Mokbel drug deals on their mind.

The drug import charges that would eventually stick related to a deal that would net Mokbel a little over $105,000 - ''small beer'', he told an associate.

He had sent a trusted deputy to Mexico City to buy three kilograms of cocaine from a gym owner Mokbel had known for years and hide it in statuettes that were later freighted to Melbourne through the United Parcel Service. Mokbel had an inside man at UPS but he didn't know US customs officers had the inside running on their plans. Police would later intercept the parcels and substitute the cocaine with a white powder. Mokbel would flee the country during the trial on these cocaine charges.

It would not be until 2008 that the law caught up with his activities between 2004 and 2005. Among the drug charges Mokbel pleaded to this week was his role of mastermind in a pill-pressing operation that produced 30 kilograms of ecstasy. The presses, operated by four foot soldiers, were hidden in a Coburg factory and a Craigieburn garage.

While he was climbing the ladder of success in the drug and gambling worlds, Mokbel defied convention when it came to his own home. Despite investing heavily in property development, he lived in the best house in a low-profile street in Pascoe Vale South. He was a millionaire among battlers who spent many afternoons sitting on a vinyl chair in the Grove Cafe and Bar in Coburg. Here Mokbel played cards with small-time crims who wanted to be him and met ''business associates''.

But Coburg was too close to home when Mokbel wanted to be noticed. Around 2006, his nightclub of choice was the Hugo Lounge in Chapel Street, promoted at the time as a ''laid back sanctuary of parisiene (sic) exotic elegance with just a touch of New York superclub lavishness''.

There he could admire the walls finished in Chesterfield leather and bust a move on the dance floor adorned with a caged, gold Buddha centrepiece.

Eventually, he moved from Pascoe Vale South and moved on from his marriage to Carmel, the mother of his first two children. The woman who stuck with him, in Greece and beyond, was McGuire, and before their European experience he romanced her in a $1 million penthouse in Southbank, with 180-degree views from Port Phillip Bay to the city.

There were several other apartments, and, apparently, casual liaisons with several other women.

When Mokbel was charged with Moran's murder, his then lawyer Peter Morrissey, SC, reminded the jury not to base their decision on his profile as a ''fairytale Shrek-like creature''.

After his acquittal on September 29, 2009, Mokbel has been at Barwon Prison awaiting hearings in seven drug trials.

But following this week's stunning developments, only two court appearances remain. One will be on June 16 when Mokbel's barrister, Peter Faris, QC, will present his plea in mitigation.

Sure to be among his submissions is that Mokbel is entitled to a reduced sentence for pleading guilty and saving the community and the legal system the time and expense of several complicated trials.