‘Joint criminal enterprise’: Judge slams police in Lawyer X scandal

A damning ruling on the use of Lawyer X - Nicola Gobbo - to gain convictions against drug kingpin Tony Mokbel has slammed a former police chief commissioner.

Former top cop Simon Overland and other senior police involved in the Lawyer X scandal have been excoriated in a scathing judgement that could lay the road map for Tony Mokbel to walk free from jail.

Among the findings in Justice Elizabeth Fullerton’s 600-page ruling were that former chief commissioner Mr Overland knew Nicola Gobbo was going to be enlisted days before she was registered as informer 3838 in September 2005.

Mr Overland would also learn Gobbo was informing on her clients — including Mokbel — whom she was recruited to inform against, the judge ruled.

It comes as two police officers involved in the scandal have filed an appeal to have their names suppressed after Justice Fullerton found they were part of a “joint criminal enterprise” with Gobbo.

Justice Fullerton — a NSW judge who was brought in to rule on 24 major questions relating to Mokbel’s drug convictions — rejected Mr Overland’s evidence that he was not told about Gobbo until shortly after she became a snitch.

Tony Mokbel (left) arrives at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne in November. Picture: AAP

The Fullerton ruling also found that Mr Overland knew from at least 2009 — when Gobbo was deregistered — that her snitching on clients had breached “proper legal bounds”.

The explosive findings published on Friday lashed senior police and prosecutors over the Lawyer X saga which has besieged Victoria’s justice system for more than 15 years.

Justice Fullerton said Mr Overland deliberately “ignored” the view of others to seek legal advice about the use of Gobbo after she was recruited because he did not want to be advised it was potentially unlawful.

She rejected much of Mr Overland’s evidence, saying she had “lingering doubts” that he had given an “entirely full, frank and candid” account.

“His failure to take appropriate steps to ensure that Ms Gobbo’s use did not risk involving Victoria Police in illegal conduct or impropriety and resulting in potentially lasting damage to the administration of justice (is) nothing short of egregious,” she said.

Justice Fullerton also found other senior police played key roles in the cover-up.

Former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland. Picture: AAP

The Office of Public Prosecutions conceded Mr Overland knew of and permitted Gobbo’s registration, despite him giving evidence to the Lawyer X royal commission in 2019 that he was never told she was informing on her clients.

He also said he was not part of the plan to sign up Gobbo as a “human source’’ and was ”surprised and concerned’’ when he discovered shortly after she was registered as an informer.

Gobbo was utlilised by Operation Posse, headed by Purana task force boss Jim O’Brien, to dismantle the Mokbel drug cartel which he headed.

The Fullerton findings could give the drug boss, who is jailed at Barwon Prison near Geelong, a pathway to challenge his trafficking convictions, known as Quills, Orbital and Magnum, committed between 2005 and 2007.

he 59-year-old’s appeal is set to be heard late next year.

His earliest release date is 2031.

Justice Elizabeth Fullerton has delivered her report. Picture: AAP

Other findings included that Victoria Police had knowledge that Mokbel’s extradition from Greece in 2008 may have been adversely affected by Gobbo’s informing.

After Mokbel’s capture in Athens, the fugitive phoned Gobbo for legal advice about his extradition which she passed on to police.

Gobbo also “rolled’’ three key criminal associates of Mokbel against him whose evidence was critical in his extradition.

“Equally as troubling, if not more is the fact that … during the extradition process, Mr Overland was of the view that deregistration of Ms Gobbo was ‘not an option by virtue of the fact that ongoing communication will be required re: court issues re: Mokbel trial’,” Justice Fullerton found.

In 2012, Victoria Police was told disclosing the Gobbo secret would cause “widespread judicial horror” with the knowledge convictions had been secured with “such ethically egregious and disgraceful behaviour”.

Justice Fullerton also took aim at four police officers who took part in a “joint criminal enterprise’’ with Gobbo to attempt to pervert the course of justice.

That finding related to an Operation Posse plot at St Kilda Road police station in April 2006, where Gobbo and the officers set up a Mokbel drug cook known by the pseudonym “Mr Cooper’’ to turn him against the cartel.

Mr Cooper pleaded guilty, took part in a sting operation and gave evidence against Mokbel and his associates on the advice of Gobbo.

Tony Mokbel, who is hoping to challenge his convictions. Picture: AAP

Justice Fullerton rejected the officers’ evidence that Gobbo made a “unilateral decision to practice the wholly unethical and improper ruse that she was acting in (Mr Cooper’s) interests”.

“The weight of the evidence undermines that claim,” she said.

“There is no other finding open to me but that Mr Cooper’s interests, which should have been primary and paramount, were subordinate to the interests of Victoria Police on whose behalf Ms Gobbo acted.”

Two of the officers’ names were redacted from the judgement as they seek to keep their identities secret.

The remaining two have been given pseudonyms.

Critical findings were also made against former Director of Public Prosecutions John Champion, who was made aware of Gobbo’s registration in 2012 following meetings with senior police.

Justice Fullerton found Justice Champion’s failure to disclose to Mokbel and others of Gobbo’s role as an agent of police against him was a breach of his duty but was unable to say why he did it other than that it was an “error of judgement”.

The DPP has declined to appeal the finding against Justice Champion who was appointed a Supreme Court judge in 2017.