D-day for Lawyer X findings
It’s judgment day for Victoria Police and gangland lawyer turned police informant Nicola Gobbo.
It’s judgment day for Victoria Police and gangland lawyer turned police informant Nicola Gobbo.
After spending two years unpicking the tangled relationship between the cops and their star informant, royal commission chair Margaret McMurdo QC will deliver her final report to Victorian Governor Linda Dessau on Monday. It is expected to be excoriating.
Victoria Police will cling tightly to whatever remains of its shattered reputation, while criminals behind bars will have high hopes of appeal bids being strengthened by the report.
Ms Gobbo was registered as a police informant three times over a 16-year period in which she went from law student to criminal defence barrister to living in fear of her life. But it is her prolific informing from 2005-09 that may see 124 criminal convictions set aside.
As crooks were murdered on Melbourne streets in the mid-2000s, Ms Gobbo began spilling her guts about her clients to her handlers in Victoria Police’s shadowy Source Development Unit.
She further admitted to the royal commission that at times she acted as an agent of police instead of in the best interest of her client. In respect to Victoria Police, counsel assisting has suggested there are three possible charges officers face over their “noble cause corruption”.
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