Lawyer X: Ex-cop at loss to explain Nicola Gobbo meeting

A corrupt former cop has been unable to explain why he met with Nicola Gobbo at the height of a drug probe.

Former drug squad detective Wayne Strawhorn. Picture: Sarah Matray

A corrupt former drug squad detective has been unable to explain why he met with Tony Mokbel’s barrister Nicola Gobbo at the height of a taskforce investigation into his drug empire eight months before he was charged.

A police diary note made by then Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Strawhorn records how in December 2000, he met with Ms Gobbo, then acting for Mokbel, to discuss Operation Kyak, a major drug investigation which eventually led to charges against some of the key figures in Melbourne’s gangland war.

Mr Strawhorn, the senior officer attached to the Kyak taskforce, told the Lawyer X Royal Commission he had no recollection of the meeting, which was sandwiched between other meetings with the Office of Public Prosections and Australian Federal Police to discuss the operation.

“I can only assume it was related to somebody she might have been defending,’’ he said. “I really can’t answer.’’

He denied that Ms Gobbo, a prominent defence barrister who led a secret life as a registered police informant, provided information to the Kyak taskforce.

Victoria Police Inspector Martin Allison, a team leader on the taskforce, told the hearing it was highly unusual for a senior member of the drug squad to meet with a lawyer representing the target of an investigation before charges were laid.

Mr Allison said the meeting, which he had no knowledge of at the time, was held at a particularly sensitive juncture for the operation, which in August 2001 resulted in drug charges against Tony Mokbel and also led to charges against crime patriarch Lewis Moran and Carl Williams.

“I think it is unusual that they were having a meeting in December 2000,’’ Mr Allison said. “That was at the peak of the investigation. That was when things were really moving quickly and evidence gathering was reaching its peak of momentum.’’

Mr Allison told the hearing that at the time, he was aware of Ms Gobbo’s close relationship with Mokbel, her practice of ingratiating herself with police and rumours of her relationship with Paul Dale, a former drug squad detective later charged but not convicted of the murder of police informant Terence Hodson.

“Ms Gobbo seemed to have a relationship with Mokbel that was outside the normal lawyer-client relationship,’’ Mr Allison told the hearing.

“I never observed it by I received information — and I’m not sure where I got it from or where it came from — that the relationship extended beyond business hours and they would regularly meet at various places in Melbourne, mostly in the early hours of the morning, late evening.’’

Under questioning from counsel for Ms Gobbo, Rishi Nathwani, Mr Allison agreed that at the time of her meeting with Mr Strawhorn, Ms Gobbo may have been representing Mokbel’s brothers, Horty and Milad.

Mr Strawhorn was jailed in 2006 for supplying a commercial quantity of pseudoephedrine, a precursor for the manufacture of amphetamines, to slain drug dealer Mark Moran.

Operation Kyak was the beginning of the end of the Mokbel drug cartel. He was convicted of trafficking ecstasy, methylamphetamines and cocaine and subsequently convicted of other serious drug charges arising from two other taskforce operations.