Police officer who handled Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo hits out at High Court
A veteran cop has hit out at the High Court, saying its decision was based on a lack of information after Victoria Police’s recruitment of Nicola Gobbo was slammed in a stinging rebuke.
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Victoria Police tried to lock down the Lawyer X royal commission and stop the public from hearing evidence from gangland barrister’s Nicola Gobbo’s handlers.
The force supported an application yesterday by lawyers for the Source Development Unit (SDU) — who managed Gobbo during her most prolific period of informing — to shut out the media and representatives of the criminals she snitched on.
But the Herald Sun and other outlets fought off Victoria Police’s attempt at a four-week reporting ban, and media will now be able to report on this part of the inquiry.
The SDU officers generated more than 5500 information reports from their hundreds of hours of contact with Gobbo between 2005 to 2009.
The police handlers will provide the first direct evidence on what Gobbo told police about Melbourne’s underworld, including her clients, and how it was passed to other areas of the force.
Earlier, a senior police officer who handled Lawyer X said the High Court was wrong to label the recruitment of gangland barrister Nicola Gobbo as “atrocious and reprehensible”.
The officer from the specialised Source Development Unit — who is known only by the pseudonym “Mr White” — told the Lawyer X Royal Commission the High Court based its decision on a lack of information.
But Mr White admitted that he had not read the High Court’s 11-page judgment.
Victoria Police fought for more than five years to keep Gobbo’s informing secret, lodging Supreme Court action to stop the Director of Public Prosecutions notifying criminals affected by Gobbo’s dual roles and appealing all the way to the High Court.
In December the High Court said Gobbo’s snitching on her gangland clients had debased the “fundamental premise of the criminal justice system” and Victoria Police conduct was “reprehensible” and an “atrocious” breach of their sworn duty.
Mr White said its decision was not based on the full set of facts and instead relied heavily on a inaccurate report into the Lawyer X saga by former chief commissioner Neil Comrie.
“I was greatly surprised to hear our behaviour be described as atrocious and reprehensible but I think they were not made aware of all the facts but based on a decision with a lack of information.”
He said the 2012 Comrie report’s conclusion that Victoria Police had “failed to discourage” Gobbo from providing legal professional privilege was wrong.
Mr White said Comrie’s inaccurate findings had infected subsequent inquiries into the police’s recruitment and use of Gobbo, which flowed all the way to the judicial decisions.
But under questioning from counsel assisting the Royal Commission, Chris Winneke QC, Mr White admitted he had not read the 11-page High Court nor the longer decision by Supreme Court justice Timothy Ginnane.
He said he had not read the entire Comrie report either, but had been shown excerpts which were “very inaccurate”.
FREED LAWYER X CLIENT TO SUE VICTORIA
Recently freed man Faruk Orman — whose 2009 conviction for a gangland murder was quashed last week due to the Lawyer X saga — was sitting in the courtroom.
Orman is likely to launch a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the State of Victoria for the 12 years he spent behind bars.
Last week, the Court of Appeal found his trial for the 2002 killing of Victor Pierce was a miscarriage of justice due to Gobbo, then Orman’s barrister, helping to convince the key witness to give evidence at his trial.
Geoff Chettle, QC, acting for the Source Development Unit tendered hundreds of hours of recorded meeting the unit had with Gobbo from 2005 to 2009.
Thousands of information reports generated from the SDU officers’ discussions with Gobbo were also tendered to the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants.