Lawyer X helped hitman get money from crime boss, Inquiry told

The defence barrister was accused by one of her own gangland clients of helping underworld bosses pay him for a contract killing.

Melbourne lawyer Nicola Gobbo, who has been revealed as Lawyer X. has denied helping a gunman get paid by crime bosses for a hit. PICTURE: ABC

The defence barrister known as Lawyer X, Nicola Gobbo, was accused by one of her own gangland clients of helping underworld bosses Tony Mokbel and Carl Williams pay him for a contract killing.

The allegation was contained in a sworn statement of a supergrass witness who implicated Mokbel in murder.

The Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants was told that Ms Gobbo denied the allegation and was furious at Purana taskforce detective Stuart Bateson for including it in the statement of the supergrass without consulting her.

At the time, Ms Gobbo was a registered informant secretly conspiring with police to encourage the supergrass and other clients to testify against Mokbel, who she was also representing on serious drug charges.

The supergrass was arrested and charged with murder at the height of Melbourne’s gangland war. He told police that while he was remanded in custody, he was visited by his barrister, Nicola Gobbo.

“I asked her to pass on a message to Carl and Tony and I rubbed my fingers together and mentioned my mother,” he said in his statement.

The supergrass explained that the gesture was a signal for Ms Gobbo to contact Williams and Mokbel and ask them to provide to his mother the money he was owed for the murder.

He said that after Ms Gobbo passed on the message, Williams visited his mother and provided her only $1500 — a fraction of what he alleged he was promised.

The Commission was told that Ms Gobbo, who met with Mr Bateson to express her frustration at the episode being included in the evidence of the supergrass, later produced notes of the conversation with the supergrass and denied his account.

Lawyers are seeking to use revelations from the Lawyer X scandal to challenge the legality of the extradition proceedings and multiple drug convictions which followed.

The suggestion, put by counsel assisting Chris Winneke QC, that Ms Gobbo facilitated the nefarious activities of her clients at the same time she was informing against them, came as Victoria Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton’s first direct knowledge of Lawyer X emerged in Commission hearings.

According to a lengthy statement tendered to the Commission by one of Ms Gobbo’s former police handlers. Mr Ashton learned of Ms Gobbo’s double life in April 2006 when he was the deputy director of the now disbanded police watchdog, the Office of Police Integrity.

Mr Ashton was told that Ms Gobbo was a police informant by then Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland, who had personally endorsed her recruitment as a human source seven months earlier.

According to the statement of Sandy White, one of Ms Gobbo’s handlers who worked in the highly secretive Source Development Unit, Mr Overland told Mr Ashton to stop Ms Gobbo from being called to a coercive OPI hearing examining allegations of police corruption and potentially, her exposure as a registered informant.

At this time, Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, the senior officer in charge of Victoria Police internal affairs, also knew that Ms Gobbo was an informant, Mr White says in his statement.

Mr Overland, Mr Ashton and Mr Cornelius were all members of the high powered Briars and Petra steering committees which later sought to use Ms Gobbo as a witness against allegedly corrupt police, a decision which effectively blew her cover as an informant and ended her legal career.

Mr Overland, Mr Ashton and Mr Cornelius rose through the ranks of the Australian Federal Police together before joining Victoria.

Mr White in his statement lists a dozen police beyond her SDU handlers who knew Ms Gobbo was an informant at the time she was providing information to police.

The Commission heard further evidence of how Ms Gobbo conspired with her police handlers to convince one of her clients, a prolific drug cook, to turn prosecution witness.

In a lengthy planning meeting with her police handlers two days before the cook was arrested at a clandestine drug lab, it was discussed how the arrests would be carried out, how the cook would be questioned and even what cigarettes he would be offered at the St Kilda Road police station.

One of the police handlers suggested he should be offered “Winne Blues.”

Mr White also raised with Gobbo the ethical dilemma of her continuing to act as a lawyer for someone she was helping police to arrest and charge. Ms Gobbo was dismissive.

Mr White: “Wouldn’t it be the case down the track that a defence barrister could argue, the advice that he got prior to participating in the record of interview was not impartial because it was done on behalf of the police by a person that was acting for the police?”

Ms Gobbo: “Who in the f..k is gunna say that?”

Mr White pressed the point: “Some people could put up an argument that a person who is a barrister perhaps could never help the police and still represent the person that she’s helping the police with.”

Mr Gobbo: “What’s the real point?”

“Just the general ethics of the whole situation,” another police handler said.

Gobbo: “The general ethics of all this is f..ked.”

Mr White told the hearing that he didn’t want Ms Gobbo anywhere near the police station when the cook was arrested and at one point, tried to convince her to take a Bali holiday.

Ms Gobbo refused. Instead, she played a key role in convincing the cook on the day he was arrested to roll.

The hearing continues.