Top lawyer Paul Leask charged in child porn raid

A top prosecuting lawyer whose record of jailing the state’s most feared criminals saw him immortalised in the Underbelly TV series is behind bars after child porn raids.

Ex-Crown prosecutor Paul Leask, who was immortalised in 2012’s Underbelly: Badness, was arrested on child porn charges.

A leading lawyer who featured in the TV series Underbelly and some of the state’s biggest criminal cases has been charged with child abuse material offences in a dramatic police raid.

Ex Crown Prosecutor Paul Leask, who was immortalised in 2012’s Underbelly: Badness, was arrested on Thursday afternoon in a Sydney CBD hotel room where police allege they found a hard drive containing more than 300 files depicting child abuse material.

Investigators also found a white crystal substance believed to be a prohibited drug.

Leask — who put some of Australia’s most dangerous people in jail and was known to not sleep during cases in the relentless pursuit of justice — is now behind bars after he did not apply for bail in the Downing Centre Local Court on Friday.

He is charged with four offences relating to the possession, access and distribution of child abuse material and another of possessing a prohibited drug.

Lawyer Paul Leask from his Facebook account. Picture: Facebook

Paul Leask leaving court in 2017. Picture: Richard Dobson

The 58-year-old ceased working for the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in recent years but was known as one of the state’s best prosecuting lawyers.

He is currently not listed on the NSW Bar Association's register of working barristers.

Played by actor Michael Dorman, Leask featured as a character in the fifth season of the Underbelly as the lawyer whose efforts in court resulted in killer crime boss Anthony Perish and his accomplices being jailed.

According to his social media accounts, Leask lives in Bali but had returned to Sydney.

He was arrested after the Australian Federal Police received a report from the United States National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children about a user uploading child abuse material online.

The referral was anonymous but police allege they then linked the online activity to Leask.

Leask featured as a character in 'Underbelly: Badness'.

Actor Jonathan LaPaglia played crime figure Anthony Perish

The agency scours the internet to uncover instances of child abuse material being uploaded to chat groups and other platforms.

It then refers the discoveries to the relevant country’s policing agencies to investigate.

On Thursday, AFP investigators tracked Leask to a hotel room located near the Downing Centre Court complex in Sydney’s CBD.

Police allege they found a hard drive in the hotel room that contained more than 300 files and the white crystal substance.

Prosecutors will also allege Leask was texting the material to a person on a chat app.

In court, Leask’s defence lawyer said he did not want to appear via an AVL screen and would not be applying for bail.

Magistrate Greg Grogin ordered he next appear in court on March 26.

It marks a massive fall for Leask who was one of the state’s top prosecutors.

On April 13, 2012, he was in court as Justice Derek Price sentenced Anthony Perish to 24 years jail over the murder of drug dealer Terry Falconer whose body was dismembered and dumped in the Hastings River.

The 2001 murder became one of the Sydney underworld’s most notorious chapters and was immortalised on the small screen as the Underbelly series, which starred Jonathan LaPaglia as Anthony Perish and Matt Nable as Detective Gary Jubelin.

Anthony Perish was arrested by heavily armed police at a McMahons Point restaurant in 2009.

Leask also prosecuted the underworld shooting murder of Neil Todorovski that saw Tarek Abdallah jailed for at least 20 years.

The case was well known in legal circles because of Leask’s use of a bullet tracing technology.