More recordings handed over as Lawyer X royal commission extended
The long-awaited report into the Lawyer X scandal won’t be delivered until almost the end of the year, with the royal commission to run almost a year longer than planned – and at a cost of almost $40 million.
Police & Courts
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The Lawyer X royal commission has been granted an extra $11.5 million and will be extended until almost the end of the year.
The Andrews Government has granted the extension on a final report being delivered by Commissioner Margaret McMurdo AC until November 30.
The report is expected to make detailed findings on Victoria Police’s use of criminal defence barrister Nicola Gobbo as a registered informer.
The extension comes as the commission has revealed another 38 hours of “relevant intercepted phone recordings’’ were obtained last month, which Victoria Police was ordered to produce a year ago.
Other significant documents continue to be given to the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, which has been buried in paperwork.
The findings of the commission will recommend substantial changes to the way police informers are handled.
It may also recommend charges be laid.
The royal commission was initially set to run for under a year at a cost of $7.5 million after it was announced by Premier Daniel Andrews in December, 2018.
It has now ballooned to almost $40m and will run a year longer than anticipated.
It was given a $20.5 million boost in May, 2019, after it was revealed Gobbo’s relationship with police stretched far longer than her peak informing period between September 2005 to January 2009 as informer 3838.
Her informing began in 1995, when she was first registered for a brief period.
She is known to have unofficially informed to police until at least 2012.
The commission has concentrated on Gobbo’s informing while practising as a lawyer between 1997 and 2010.
The complexity of the scandal as well as a troublesome relationship between the commission and Victoria Police has hampered the commission.
The commission has stated a number of factors in its request for an
extension, including;
* IDENTIFYING cases that may be affected by Victoria Police’s use of
Gobbo as an informer, which to date numbers more than 1200 people,
*DELAYS in receiving critical records from Victoria Police and other
agencies, which number more than 146,000, some running to thousands of
pages,
*LEGAL claims by police about keeping information from the pubic,
*AN EXTRA 47 hearing days over the intended 80 days initially scheduled; and
*CORONAVIRUS having impacted receiving and processing documents and
other material.
As a result of the unethical relationship between Victoria Police and Gobbo, the murder conviction of Faruk Orman was overturned in July last year.
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