Mafia boss Pat Barbaro launches bid for freedom based on Lawyer X’s police informing
One of Melbourne’s most infamous mafia ringleaders is claiming his record-breaking ecstasy smuggling conviction was tainted because of Lawyer X’s police informing — and is now using the claim to launch a fresh bid for freedom.
Police & Courts
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The mafia ringleader of a world record-breaking ecstasy smuggling operation has launched a bid for freedom, claiming his conviction was tainted because of Lawyer X’s informing.
Calabrian mob boss Pasquale ‘Pat’ Barbaro has become the highest-profile member of the infamous ‘Tomato Tins’ syndicate to lodge an appeal against their convictions.
Barbaro was jailed for 30 years to life after customs officers at the Port of Melbourne intercepted 15 million pills hidden in 3000 tomato tins imported from Italy in 2007.
The Don, from mafia-hotbed Griffith, is seething over the role of barrister Nicola Gobbo – aka Lawyer X – in the sting.
While in jail he has even drawn a spoof Employment Wanted poster for Gobbo, describing her as “reprehensible, atrocious, deceiving, corrupt, and recommended by Vic Pol”.
He has also depicted former Victoria Police chief Simon Overland, who was in charge of the crime department at the time they signed Gobbo up as an informer, as Pinnochio in an image titled ‘Simonocchio’.
The Herald Sun can reveal that Barbaro lodged his appeal late last month.
Barbaro had already been funding a bid by syndicate member Rob Karam to escape his 37-year jail term, in the hope that case would provide a precedent for his release.
In 2016, ‘docks’ expert Karam became the first criminal to launch an appeal against their convictions on the Lawyer X principle, after the Herald Sun revealed a barrister later unmasked as Nicola Gobbo was used by Victoria Police to inform on her clients.
Karam hopes to walk free by the end of the year.
The Herald Sun has previously revealed that while Gobbo was representing him in a drug trial on June 5, 2007, he gave her an envelope containing a shipping document for safekeeping.
When Gobbo asked him what it was, he said ‘a bit of this, a bit of that’.
Gobbo then photocopied the document, known as a Bill of Lading, and gave it to her police handlers.
The document detailed exactly where 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy was due to land. Gobbo even translated the document, written in Italian, for them.
Within a fortnight, Victoria Police told Australian Customs, the Australian Crime Commission and finally the Australian Federal Police, about the inbound container aboard MV Monica from Naples, Italy.
But Gobbo’s role would be hidden by the Victorian force, which went to lengths to keep it from lead investigator the AFP, which it did not trust.
The bust was later credited to a ‘routine’ inspection by customs officers, while an AFP head put it down to intelligence from a source based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, saying there was “no smoking gun” that led directly to the container.
Armed with the Bill of Lading, Gobbo’s police handlers also deployed her to gather more intelligence on those connected to the drug importation.
On June 27, the ACC informed the agencies their surveillance had detected a meeting between Karam, John Higgs and “3 European-looking males”.
A day later, on June 28, the illicit cargo arrived at Melbourne’s port.
For the next four months, Barbaro’s drug syndicate made fruitless attempts to obtain their drugs, all while being bugged and watched and dealing with Gobbo.
After giving up on the haul, they then organised numerous other drug importations to pay off their European suppliers for the missing load.
Documents reveal Victoria Police continued to refuse to tell the AFP the identity of their secret source.
On August 8, 2008, nationwide raids resulted in the arrests of 17 suspects connected to the syndicate. More would come.
Gobbo then incredibly began acting for the gang leaders of the ‘Tomato Tins’ conspiracy – against the instructions of her police handlers.
Among them was Karam, who by trusting Gobbo, had not only doomed the illicit cargo, but had unwittingly condemned 30 organised crime figures to a combined 300 years in prison.
Gobbo regarded the ‘Tomato Tins’ sting as her greatest of all.
If Karam wins his appeal, the audacious drug trafficker would become the second man to have his convictions overturned due to Victoria Police’s flawed use of Gobbo as an informer.
Powerful Italian mobsters such as Barbaro, Saverio Zirilli, Francesco Madafferi and Salvatore Agresta are waiting and watching from Loddon Prison in regional Victoria.
Ten Tomato Tins men still remain in prison of the 32 prosecuted.
One, Graham Gene Potter, remains on the run.
After the Herald Sun revealed police had used a barrister dubbed Lawyer X to inform on her clients, the force fought for five years to keep her identity and the scale of the corruption secret.
But in December 2018, the High Court lifted the lid on what it described as a debasing of the “fundamental premise of the criminal justice system”.
Victoria Police’s conduct was “reprehensible” and an “atrocious” breach of their sworn duty, the court concluded, prompting Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to order a royal commission and Gobbo’s identity to finally be revealed.
On Monday, the counsel assisting the commission will release its analysis of the evidence presented to the inquiry, which Commissioner Margaret McMurdo consider for her report due in November.
* LAWYER X: THE EXTRAORDINARY FULL STORY
How one woman played off police and criminals in Australia’s biggest gangland war – and how journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon fought to expose the truth.
Lawyer X, by Dowsley and Carlyon and published by HarperCollins Australia, is out on September 7.
Pre-order your copy now at Booktopia https://bit.ly/30Nv9we
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