Police move to shut out lawyers
After trying to keep the media out of the Lawyer X Royal Commission hearing last week, police now want some lawyers banned too.
Law & Order
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Victoria Police has once again tried to shut out those most affected by Lawyer X’s informing from an inquiry examining the force’s dealings with its most controversial source.
Lawyers representing Victoria Police have asked the Lawyer X Royal Commission to lock out representatives of criminals Nicola Gobbo acted for and informed on from weeks of evidence.
The inquiry is to hear from a series of Purana Taskforce detectives — whose investigations were greatly assisted by the information Gobbo was providing on her gangland clients — in closed hearings due to multiple suppression order dating back to Melbourne’s underworld law.
And after last week making an unsuccessful application for the media to be shut out of the Purana detectives hearings, the police requested lawyers representing Faruk Orman and Evangelos Goussis should be barred from the hearing room.
Counsel assisting the Royal Commission Chris Winneke, QC, said it was absurd lawyers representing those most impacted by Gobbo’s informing would not be able to hear evidence that related to their clients.
He also slammed police for its lack of disclosure of documents, revealing that redactions were so heavy that Orman’s own name was blacked out from police witness statements.
“It is absurd to suggest that Mr Orman would not already be aware of the majority of the information in the statement and I’d challenge the police to say otherwise.
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“His own name is there, it is redacted.”
Adam Chernok representing gangland hitman Evangelos Goussis said “Kafka” himself could not have come up with the type of conditions Victoria Police wanted to conduct the inquiry.
Commissioner Margaret McMurdo said the representatives would be allowed into the closed hearings if they give an undertaking not to reveal irrelevant information to their clients.