Sydney’s legal circles in overdrive over existence of ‘Lawyer Y’ mole
It is one of the biggest scandals to hit Australia’s legal circles – prominent barrister Nicola Gobbo outed as Victoria police informant ‘Lawyer X’. Now lawyers in Sydney’s legal circles are paranoid at the thought of their own ‘Lawyer Y’.
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The Lawyer X scandal has turned the Victorian legal criminal milieu on its head, and there’s a very strong feeling of paranoia that one or many defence lawyers have been compromised to do the same thing in Sydney.
“We’re calling them Lawyer Y,” one Sydney based lawyer said.
“There’s a lot of chat about it (whether it is happening in Sydney),” the lawyer.
“And there’s a reasonable list of suspects as to who it could be.”
If you’ve been cryogenically frozen of late and missed it, the brief history is that Melbourne defence barrister Nicola Gobbo — who represented high profile criminals like Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel — was revealed as being a police informer known as Lawyer X.
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So, not only was Gobbo defending the likes of Williams and co in court, she was also playing double agent and telling the cops their secrets — effectively erasing their right to a fair trial.
The affair has sparked as Royal Commission, and with the eye popping details being revealed in recent hearings, it has Sydney lawyers and criminals worried about their respective peers and legal representatives.
One of the key features of Gobbo’s case was that she became a police informer as a law student in the mid 1990s after police caught her with drugs.
Our local lawyer said: “So how much of a stretch is it to think that a few Sydney lawyers could have found themselves in that situation?”
Known as Informer 3838, Victoria Police spent $4.52 million over five years trying to keep their use of Ms Gobbo a secret.
Her identity was revealed in 2018.
“The battle lines are so clearly drawn between prosecution and defence that prior to her identity being revealed you would have laughed at the prospect of a defence lawyer ratting on their clients, but here we are,” our lawyer said. “The reality is, it has happened. So what’s to say the same tactic hasn’t been used in Sydney?”
COLD WAR
Snitch is rather partial to a tale of underworld frivolity as long as none of the good guys get hurt, and this one we heard recently is worth retelling.
It involves two high profile underworld figures, who were friends prior to this incident, but can’t be named because they are both currently before the courts on drugs charges.
Our story starts when one of the crooks steals a large shipment of (you guessed it) drugs off the other.
Furious, the out of pocket crook tracked down their former friend and performed a bit of underworld surgery on their knees with a cricket bat.
At the hospital, despite being unable to walk, the injured drug thief kept the code of silence when questioned by the doctors.
Doctor: “How did this happen?”
Crook: “A fridge fell on my knees”.
Doctor: “OK then. Are you allergic to anything?”
Crook: “Yeah, fridges”.
ROGERSON’S DAY IN COURT – AGAIN
We’re told Roger Rogerson’s appeal is imminent with the jailed former cop poised to lodge his documents with the court within weeks.
Rogerson was jailed for life alongside fellow former disgraced cop Glen McNamara over the murder of student and drug dealer Jamie Gao inside the commercial storage shed in 2014.
The details of Rogerson’s reasons are yet to be revealed, but given the circumstances that the two cops’ movements up until they went into the shed were caught on CCTV, we can’t see how either can get out of it without blaming the other.
This is pure armchair speculation, but until they are filed, it’s all we’ve got.
Got a snitch? Contact
ava.benny-morrison@news.com.au or brenden.hills@news.com.au