Complete wrap of the Lawyer X Royal Commission
After 127 days of hearings, the Royal Commission into the Lawyer X scandal is drawing to a close. More than 80 people, including high-ranking members of Victoria Police and career criminals gave evidence. Here’s what happens next.
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After 127 days of hearings, the Royal Commission into one of Victoria’s biggest ever legal scandals draws to a close.
For more than a year, Victoria Police’s recruitment, handling and management of their most prolific informer — gangland barrister Nicola Gobbo — was in the spotlight.
Sparked by a five-year investigation by the Herald Sun, the explosive inquiry before Commissioner Margaret McMurdo has discovered almost 1300 people may have had their legal cases tainted by the woman dubbed Lawyer X.
More than 80 people, including high-ranking members of Victoria Police, career criminals and Gobbo herself gave sworn testimony from the witness box over the course of the hearings.
Here’s what you need to know:
WHY HOLD A ROYAL COMMISSION?
The duplicity of Nicola Gobbo as a lawyer and informer, during three separate stints from 1995 until 2009, caused an unprecedented crisis for the justice system.
A royal commission was established, fundamentally, to ascertain the cases that had been tainted by Gobbo’s informing to police.
A High Court decision in 2018, after years of inquiries and court battles, rejected Victoria Police’s stance that her role as an informer should not be made public on safety grounds.
KEY DOCUMENTS AND DISCOVERIES:
Motivation:
Nicola Gobbo just wanted to belong, the commission heard.
Asked why she first became associated with Tony Mokbel and Melbourne’s criminal underbelly, she admitted it stemmed from a desire to be “wanted”.
“As pathetic as it is for me to admit, I did derive some self-importance and some feeling that I was relevant or validated by reason of being wanted by people like Tony.”
Once registered, she said she felt pressured to “please” her police handlers by snitching on those same clients and associates.
The Mokbels:
Gobbo was recruited in 2005 to help “take down” the cornerstone of Melbourne’s illicit drug trade - the Mokbel syndicate.
Gobbo, who represented had for years represented the feared drug baron, said she wanted him and his extended family “out of (her) life”.
Former police chief Simon Overland said he saw the decision to register her as Informer 3838 as the “least worst option” to free herself from the tangles of her gangland crew.
Double Dealing:
In arguably one of the worst examples of Gobbo’s work as a police agent, the defence lawyer not only set up a Mokbel associate — who was also her client and friend — she gave him legal advice after his arrest. On her advice, the man pleaded guilty and became an informer. She also told her police that guns were hidden in a drug lab following a lawyer-client meeting in which she was told about the firearms. They were found and charges were laid. Gobbo was recorded telling her handlers the general ethics of the situation “were f---ed”.
Police diaries:
A series of past and present high-ranking police officers revealed they stopped keeping a police diary at the height of Gobbo’s informing.
Three Victorian Chief Commissioners: Christine Nixon, Simon Overland and Graham Ashton, gave evidence they did not keep official records during the period of her registration and current Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius also said he ceased keeping a diary in 2006 ‘’because of the sensitive nature of the cases’’ he was managing.
But in one of the most shocking moments of the inquiry, three diaries belonging to Mr Overland were discovered in an unmarked box in a suburban warehouse in the final hours of his evidence, contradicting his earlier evidence.
The confession statement:
One of the most contentious documents produced to the Commission was an unsigned statement authored by Gobbo about the 2003 murder of “vampire gigolo” Shane Chartres-Abbott.
The statement, which was never used, alleged a key suspect in the killing confessed to her.
The explosive claim set two veteran detectives against each other in the witness box as they argued the veracity of the confession.
Gobbo initially denied she ever told police of the confession, but later conceded she may have said it after all.
SWOT analysis:
A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis was compiled by one of Gobbo’s police handlers in late 2008 after concerns were raised that her secret identity as Informer 3838 could be revealed and multiple gangland convictions overturned as a result of her double dealing.
The document set out in plain terms, a Royal Commission was on the horizon if her informing was ever revealed.
The analysis was referred up the chain to then-deputy commissioner Simon Overland in January 2009.
Mr Overland told the Commission he had no recollection of ever seeing it and would remember if he had.
This claim was contradicted by the then-head of Crime Department, who said he personally delivered it to Mr Overland.
NICOLA GOBBO: THE WOMAN AT THE CENTRE OF IT ALL
Gobbo had, through her lawyer, attempted for almost nine months to dodge public scrutiny by claiming she was too mentally and physically unwell to testify at the Royal Commission.
In December, Commissioner McMurdo ultimately dismissed her various excuses and ordered she give must evidence.
She did so over five days in January from a secret location after successfully arguing to have her face hidden from the public.
This was despite weeks earlier appearing on ABC’s 7.30 for a sit-down interview where her face was beamed to the world.
During her evidence Gobbo revealed she:
MISLED the Board of Examiners when applying to become a practising barrister by omitting key details about her criminal past and drug dealing ex-boyfriend in the mid-90s;
WAS driven to inform by a desire to be “belong”, saying she felt validated by people such as Mokbel “wanting her.”;
SUGGESTED her informing was encouraged by a series of powerful and manipulative men in the police force to whom she just couldn’t “say no”;
POTENTIALLY perverted the course of justice by informing on the same clients she was representing in court;
DENIED she had obtained financial advantage by deception despite charging her clients tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees while secretly acting as an agent of police; and
REFUTED the evidence of another female solicitor that she burgled her chambers in search of a sworn statement from Carl Williams which she believed “had her name all over it”.
QUESTIONS LEFT UNANSWERED:
The Hodson murders
Although the murders of police informers Terence and Christine Hodson were explored by the Royal Commission, the questioning would stop just as it became interesting.
Gobbo has denied any involvement in Hodson’s sensitive informer file making its way to her client, Tony Mokbel, in February, 2004.
At the time she had close relationships with almost every figure who might want Hodson dead. And on the night Hodson - her client - and his wife were killed, she was with a man who allegedly knew what was about to happen.
Stunningly, Victoria Police did not ask the former police officer they charged with killing Terence Hodson, Paul Dale, a single question while he was in the witness box.
Mokbel’s great escape
Did Gobbo help police track down Tony Mokbel after the drug kingpin fled overseas during his cocaine smuggling trial in March 2006?
Gobbo, his lawyer, warned her police handlers Mokbel was “up to something” shortly before he skipped bail and sailed to Greece but they failed to heed her warnings, the inquiry heard. Mokbel was eventually arrested in 2007 and returned to Australia.
It remains unknown whether Gobbo provided information to police about Australia’s most high-profile fugitive, and if that information was useful.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
The first round of public hearings concluded on February 21, after 127 sitting days and testimony from more than 80 witnesses.
There will be a brief number of public hearings in April to examine policy and procedure in regards to the use of human sources in Victoria Police more broadly.
Counsel for the Commission will also provide their final submissions and recommendations for the final report.
Following this, lawyers for parties including Victoria Police and the Gobbo’s handlers will have a chance to respond to these and put forward their own submissions.
By July, the Commission is expected to hand down their final report in the matter including their findings and any recommendations.
MORE ON LAWYER X
These are likely to include recommendations of criminal charges that can be laid against anyone involved in the scandal.
The Royal Commission itself doesn’t have the power to charge anyone, but can recommend the Director of Public Prosecutions do so.
These offences could include perjury, perverting the course of justice and obtaining financial advantage by deception.
Originally published as Complete wrap of the Lawyer X Royal Commission