Tony Mokbel downfall: How a drug kingpin sought to expose an undercover cop

There is something slightly ridiculous about a short, portly man getting naked in a restaurant bathroom, even when he is a senior member of a notorious drug cartel.

The scene was made even more curious when the second man in the bathroom swung around to expose his bare buttocks to the drug dealer.

While this column is called Naked City, keen readers will know we rarely dwell on nudity, but bare with us, there is a point.

The disrobing in a popular Box Hill pasta and pizza establishment was not some sort of semi-clad, semi-secret tryst, but a meeting ordered across the other side of the world by Australia’s then most-wanted fugitive – Tony Mokbel.

Students of the underworld will know that Mokbel is before the Supreme Court of Appeal arguing his drug convictions should be quashed because