Mokbel receives government payout for savage jail bashing
Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel, who was released from custody in April after almost 18 years in custody, has had another legal victory after receiving an undisclosed financial settlement over a savage attack in Barwon Prison in 2019.
However, Mokbel will be unable to access the funds until at least June 2026, after the Victorian government paid the settlement into a 'prisoner compensation quarantine fund' on Thursday.
It is unknown when the case settled, but lawyers acting for the now 59-year-old launched Supreme Court proceedings against the state in February 2023, when Mokbel was still behind bars.
According to a statement of claim, the governor and senior staff at Barwon Prison had failed to take adequate measures to protect Mokbel from a brutal bashing and stabbing by two fellow inmates on February 11, 2019.
Senior prison staff are accused of failing to adequately respond to an anonymous, handwritten note received by the prison a few days earlier, which warned a high-profile inmate in the Diosma unit would be 'taken out'.
Prison authorities also failed to take necessary measures to protect Mokbel following a story in the Herald Sun a day before the assault, which made him a target of inmates of Polynesian background, according to court documents.
Mokbel spent five days in a coma at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and sustained a 'traumatic brain injury causing intellectual disability'.
Lawyers acting for Mokbel had pursued aggravated and exemplary damages because they also alleged the prison had acted unlawfully and exacerbated their client's psychological injuries by rehousing him in a high-security unit upon his return from hospital.
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