James Campbell: Lawyer X evidence pointing towards terrible truths
The Lawyer X scandal has exposed some shocking revelations, but the most surprising thing is that the worst may still be yet to be revealed, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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About halfway through reading volume two of Chris Winneke’s submissions to the Lawyer X royal commission, it struck me that the most extraordinary thing about the whole scandal is that the use by Victoria Police of a defence barrister as an informer may not even be the worst part of the story.
Which is saying something, because getting a brief to grass her clients really does undermine one of the assumptions that is meant to be at the heart of our justice system: namely that the person representing you in court is working for you and not for the police.
This isn’t a universal assumption. In China today, as it was in the former Soviet Union, it is generally understood that both prosecutors and defence lawyers work for the cops.
It was just a little surprising to learn that over a number of years the same thing was happening in Victoria.
Winneke’s submission makes it clear this conduct is likely to lead to a number of convictions being overturned and people being released from prison, up to and including the big wig himself, Tony Mokbel.
As bad as all this is what strikes me as the real scandal is the lengths to which Victoria Police went to, to cover up what they had done.
The Lawyer X saga is best understood as two interconnected scandals.
First was the corruption of the judicial process itself by Nicola Gobbo and her police handlers. Understandably, this has been the aspect of the story that has received the most attention.
But for me the real action in Winneke’s narrative gets going in Chapter 20, which details her $2.88m payout from VicPol in 2010.
In April that year Gobbo sued over the way police had treated her during one aspect of the Paul Dale/Hodsons saga.
The case was handled by the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office, which in late May organised a conference with a team of barristers at which Gobbo’s “involvement in at least three separate investigation areas (Petra, Briars and Purana) was discussed”.
According to Winneke, it “was agreed at the meeting that counsel would need to be briefed by the relevant investigators in order to understand the history of the matter”.
A day later the VGSO told police that an issue in defending the lawsuit would be “the history of the plaintiff’s relationship with Victoria Police” going on to add “we understand that the plaintiff has provided information to Victoria Police in matters other than the Dale prosecution and that she may still be providing information to Victoria Police.”
Winneke makes clear, at this point everyone involved knew what was at stake: “Counsel requested that Victoria Police arrange a confidential briefing on the extent of Ms Gobbo’s relationship with Victoria Police, and how it may impact the way the defence is drafted. Counsel also wanted to ascertain whether information provided to Victoria Police in matters other than the Dale prosecution may be protected by legal professional privilege.”
The next month there was a case conference at the barristers were briefed on Gobbo’s interactions with Petra, Purana and Briars task forces.
Winneke doesn’t say exactly what the learned friends were told at this conference, which is a pity as it would be nice to know exactly what they were told regarding the matter of legal professional privilege, but he makes it very clear police were desperate to avoid any chance their previous dealings with Gobbo coming to light.
The next month the VGSO told the police they had advice she was likely to win her and minds turned to how much they should pay her.
Again, Winneke makes it clear the lawyers understood what was at stake. A trial, the solicitors warned, might reveal Gobbo “had provided information to Victoria Police in matters other than the Dale prosecution and that she might still be providing information to Victoria Police” as well as “the many hours of conversations between police members and the Plaintiff that might come out during the discovery process”.
To avoid “exposure of sensitive information damaging to the criminal justice system” the VGSO, “recommended the payment of an additional sum to settle the proceeding, over and above the amount that the plaintiff might reasonably be expected to be awarded.
Think about that: the state government’s lawyers, who it is clear had a pretty good idea of what was going on, connived at a strategy to conceal what they must have known was wrong doing using taxpayers’ money.
In August that year, police minister Bob Cameron ticked off on the payment to Gobbo “with a premium … so that Victoria Police could avoid public exposure”.
Bizarrely, the first time the VGSO seems to have turned its mind to the, um, ethics of this whole thing was when it was asked to consider the question by former Police Commissioner Neil Comrie, two years later.
At that point the VGSO advised the duties a lawyer owes to the court and their clients “are likely to impose significant limitations” on their use as a snitch and they “would be under a duty not to disclose … information that is subject to legal professional privilege”. Indeed snitching on a client would “ethically repugnant”.
Over six years, the state government allowed — indeed funded — Victoria Police to run arguments in the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and finally the High Court that would have allowed them to get away with this “ethically repugnant” behaviour.
That is a big, if not bigger, scandal.
James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist