Lawyer X client Zlate Cvetanovski acquitted after nine years

Nicola Gobbo client Zlate Cvetanovski has conviction overturned by Vic Court of Appeal after serving nine years in jail.

Zlate Cvetanovski leaves Loddon Prison in Victoria, after nearly ten years behind bars. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

An associate of Tony Mokbel has had his conviction overturned in a damning indictment of Victoria Police’s use of lawyer Nicola Gobbo as a police informant.

Zlate Cvetanovski has served nearly a decade in jail since he was convicted in 2011 of commercial drug trafficking, with Ms Gobbo, known as “Lawyer X”, acting as his legal adviser.

Lawyer Ruth Parker said on Friday that Mr Cvetanovski was interested in pursuing “any ­avenue of compensation for the years he spent in custody”.

Mr Cvetanovski said in a statement that the decision by the Victorian Court of Appeal — that a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred — hopefully marked an end to “a traumatic, frustrating, and confusing period of my life”.

“Until May of this year, I had been in custody for over 11 years after fighting charges without understanding that my defence of such charges had been undermined since before my case began,” he said.

“In fact, before I was even charged. It is distressing beyond explanation to have to realise that, in a trial where you were ­attempting to defend yourself, the very basics of procedural fairness were denied you by people who swore an oath to uphold the law.”

The final report of the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants is yet to be handed down but Mr Cvetanovski said the revelations of the conduct between Ms Gobbo and sections of Victoria Police had been “shocking, scandalous and unprecedented in Australia’s legal system”.

In the judgment, Court of ­Appeal president Chris Maxwell said Mr Cvetanovski was unaware Ms Gobbo had been a police informant and a legal ­adviser to the key witness at his trial, a prison inmate known by the pseudonym “Mr Cooper”.

He said Ms Gobbo had persuaded Mr Cooper to co-operate with police and incriminate Mr Cvetanovski.

“Throughout 2006, Ms Gobbo had an extremely close personal relationship with Mr Cooper,” Justice Maxwell said. “She provided him with moral support, conducted welfare checks and made requests to Victoria Police to look after him.”

Mr Cooper also received regular payments into his prison canteen fund, as well as one-off payments, Justice Maxwell said.

In the appeal, lawyers for Mr Cvetanovski argued he was unable to challenge the admissibility of key evidence in his trial, unable to properly test Mr Cooper’s evidence against him and was unaware Ms Gobbo had breached her professional duty to him.

Justice Maxwell said the Crown had conceded Mr Cooper’s evidence was central to the case and that Victoria Police’s failure to disclose the payments to Mr Cooper resulted in a substantial miscarriage of justice.

He said the nondisclosure of the payments meant the jury was unable to make a proper assessment of Mr Cooper’s credibility.

Justice Maxwell said the Crown conceded that it was unjust to order a retrial in the circumstances. The court ordered the appeal be allowed, the conviction set aside and a judgment of acquittal entered.

Another of Ms Gobbo’s ­clients, Faruk Orman, walked free in July last year after spending 12 years in jail over the murder of gangland figure Victor Peirce.

The Court of Appeal found Mr Orman’s right to a fair trial had been subverted by the use of Ms Gobbo as an informant.

Mr Orman currently has civil proceedings under way against the state in the ­Supreme Court.

Ms Gobbo’s dual role is also the basis of two appeals against conviction by former drug kingpin Mokbel, who pleaded guilty to a series of major drug crimes.

Mokbel is serving almost 30 years in jail, but the royal commission heard Ms Gobbo passed information on Mokbel to Victoria Police while she was acting for him in 2006.

Counsel assisting the royal commission Chris Winneke QC also found Ms Gobbo was providing legal advice to Mokbel while he was fighting extradition from Greece in 2008. The case is expected to return before the Court of Appeal at the end of November.

Victoria Police has apologised for using Ms Gobbo as an informant against her own clients.