Victoria Police set to be grilled over concerns of corruption in Hodson murder investigation

A phone call ­stated to be between informer lawyer ­Nicola Gobbo and Tony Mokbel will be probed by the royal commission, after concerns of corruption were raised in Victoria Police’s ­investigation into the Hodson murders.

The Lawyer X royal commission is set to grill Victoria Police over concerns of corruption in its ­investigation of the gangland murders of Terry and Christine Hodson 15 years ago.

Police initially told the state coroner in a 2014 ­submission that the force had an intercepted phone call vital to its case against prime suspect Paul Dale, an ­allegedly crooked officer.

The force later told the ­coroner, investigating the 2004 deaths of the Hodsons, that “there was no evidence to ­support its existence’’.

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The Herald Sun can now ­reveal that the commission is probing whether the phone call — ­stated to be between informer lawyer ­Nicola Gobbo and client Tony Mokbel — was hidden from the coroner.

The initial police submission asserted that Gobbo had been captured on tape by the Australian Federal Police telling ­Mokbel that she “had been in touch with their mutual friend, ‘Pauline’, who had some documents for Mokbel to see”.

Police alleged that “Pauline’’ was code for Paul Dale, in building its case that the corrupt ­officer was behind Terry ­Hodson’s murder.

Terry and Christine Hodson were murdered in their Kew home in 2004.

The “documents’’ mentioned in the purported “Pauline call” were alleged to be Hodson’s ­extensive informer history against gangland figures — known as the “Blue File”.

Police asserted the classified file had been stolen by Dale from the St Kilda Rd police headquarters on September 27, 2003.

The file was allegedly leaked to Mokbel by the end of ­February 2004.

Police discovered the Blue File had been faxed to a Queensland underworld ­figure from a horse stable linked to Mokbel.

On May 16, three months after the file was circulated to the underworld, the bodies of ­the Hodsons were found in their Kew home by their children.

But the submission detailing the “Pauline call” was withdrawn after coroner Ian Gray’s inquest ended.

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That came despite the Herald Sun having been told ­before the inquest began that police had become aware of crucial evidence — believed to be the intercept — in April 2010.

Throughout her informing career, police went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Gobbo from being compelled to give evidence in court, due to fears it would expose her secret and ­unethical assistance to the force.

Sources have also suggested the call might have been “buried” because it would expose Gobbo’s criminal conduct in helping get the file to Mokbel.

The Herald Sun has been told that in 2010, investigators were not permitted to question Gobbo as a suspect in helping leak the Blue File.

Police asserted the classified file had been stolen by Paul Dale from the St Kilda Rd police headquarters.

A phone call ­stated to be between informer lawyer ­Nicola Gobbo and client Tony Mokbel will be probed by the royal commission.

It was the discovery of the crucial evidence, obtained ­following the fatal bashing of Carl Williams in 2010 in ­Barwon Prison, which prompted Hodson investigators to approach senior command about questioning the lawyer, according to sources.

But clearance to question Gobbo, a key witness against Dale, was not granted.

Dale was alleged to have taken Hodson’s informer file from the drug squad’s office hours after his partner — ­corrupt police officer David Miechel — burgled a Mokbel drug house with their ­informer, Terry Hodson.

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Dale and Miechel were Hodson’s police handlers.

They had also been members of a surveillance operation on the drug house in Oakleigh.

Dale spoke by phone to Miechel, arrested at the scene of the crime, after he was put in an ambulance for treatment for a bite from a police dog.

The pair then had an unsupervised discussion in Miechel’s hospital room at the Epworth Hospital in East Melbourne.

Hodson “rolled” on both Dale and Miechel for organising the burglary.

And Gobbo, Hodson’s lawyer, warned criminal figures about his informer status.

She has denied telling Dale, with whom she was in constant contact at the time, that Hodson had implicated him in the burglary, even though she said the officer had been desperate for ­information.

Police at the scene of a double murder in East Kew.

Almost four years after the Hodsons’ deaths, Gobbo also insisted to her police handlers that Mokbel showed her ­Hodson’s informer file, and not the other way around.

“He could lie about things such as; I slept with him, I took drugs with him, laundered money, passed on sensitive ESD (Ethical Standards Division) documents, passed on certain IRs (information reports) re Hodson to Tony,” she said, when police asked what Mokbel could say about her in 2008.

Her protestations are detailed in police information reports released by the ­Supreme Court this year.

The reports add: “She says in reality it was the other way around. Tony showed them to her. She has already told us this.”

But in a police interview six weeks after the Hodson murders, Gobbo denied even ­seeing the Blue File.

It is understood the Royal Commission into the ­Management of Police Informants has been told the ­call recording does not exist. But the commission is keeping an “open mind’’.

A civil claim by Andrew and Mandy Hodson argues that their father would have taken greater precautions had he been told by police that the Blue File had been stolen.

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