I don’t lie anymore: says Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo

Supergrass Nicola Gobbo agrees she was a ‘spectacularly good liar’ but claims she gave it up in 2011 or 2012.

Barrister-turned-snitch Nicola Gobbo. Picture: ABC

Supergrass Nicola Gobbo agrees she was a “spectacularly good liar” but claims she gave it up in 2011 or 2012.

Giving evidence for a fourth day, Ms Gobbo told the Lawyer X royal commission in Melbourne that she kept her double life secret from friends, family and “highly suspicious criminal clients” for many years.

“I was juggling all the time,” Ms Gobbo said on Friday.

Jeff Gleeson SC, representing former Victorian police commissioner Simon Overland, questioned Ms Gobbo about her deception of ­clients and misleading the legal admissions board during her ­application to practice law.

“What I want to put to you, Ms Gobbo, is that you are a spectacularly good liar, do you accept that?” he said.

“Ah, yes,” she replied.

But the barrister-turned-snitch rejected the suggestion that she had “lost the capacity” to know when she was telling a lie.

“When did you give up your practice of being a spectacularly good liar, Ms Gobbo?” Mr Gleeson asked.

“Um, when I ceased having … well probably putting a year on it 2011, 2012,” she said.

Ms Gobbo described Mr Overland to the commission last March as “evil, corrupt and dishonest”.

Under cross-examination on Friday Ms Gobbo rejected the ­argument that she had no basis for her statement.

“It’s an opinion,” she said.

Ms Gobbo said she relied on what she had heard Mr Overland said, things she’d read about him and what other police officers had told her.

“These police officers upon whom you rely in part for your view that he’s evil, corrupt and dishonest, are they the same ones who’ve lied to you and manipulated you in your view?” Mr Gleeson asked.

“Some of them, yes,” Ms Gobbo said.

Counsel assisting Chris Winneke QC accused Ms Gobbo of deception for accepting legal fees from clients she was informing on.

“You knew that you weren’t entitled to the money,” he said.

The commission heard Ms Gobbo charged drug trafficker Rob Karam about $60,000 over three years for representing him while she was an informant.

The commission previously heard she photocopied shipping documents given to her by Karam and gave them to police, leading to the world’s then largest seizure of ecstasy: 15 million pills stowed in tomato tins and shipped from Italy.

Ms Gobbo then went on to represent and charge legal fees to several men arrested over the plot.

“Do you accept that had they known they wouldn’t have paid you that money?” Mr Winneke asked.

“Well they wouldn’t have ­engaged me in the first place,” Ms Gobbo said.

Ms Gobbo said she was led by police to believe that they would stop her if she was doing anything wrong.

She told the hearing that she knew it was wrong but rejected Mr Winneke’s proposition that she wasn’t entitled to the money.

“I don’t want to argue semantics but did I go and do whatever I said I was going to do? Yes I did,” she said. “Was it wrong? Yes. Did I breach their confidence and not tell them about my dual role? Yes.”

Ms Gobbo will continue giving evidence on Tuesday.