Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo describes pressure from underworld: ‘There were a lot of screaming phone calls’

Barrister-turned-police informer Nicola Gobbo has described the moment gangland hit man Benji Veniamin threatened her at her house as she takes the witness stand in her case against Victoria.

Nicola Gobbo has taken to the stand in her civil trial against the state. Picture: ABC News

Barrister-turned-police informer Nicola Gobbo has described the moment Benji Veniamin, hit man for Carl Williams, threatened her outside her home after it had been revealed that she had represented rival underworld figure Lewis Moran.

Ms Gobbo, also known as Lawyer X, appeared via video link in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday as part of her lawsuit against the state for compensation for injury, loss and damage she claims she suffered as a result of its alleged negligence in its use of her as a police informer in the early 2000s.

Due to security concerns, Ms Gobbo’s appearance was hidden from the view of everyone in the court except judge Melinda Richards and the trial lawyers.

In her first day on the stand, Ms Gobbo told the court she began to come into contact with “rising stars in the criminal underworld” while working as a junior solicitor in the late 1990s in Alex Lewenberg’s criminal law firm.

Gobbo with gangland boss, Tony Mokbel in 2004.

Ms Gobbo said it was while working at the firm that she met Tony Mokbel, after she was asked to assist him to sign bail documents at the Magistrates Court for his brother Horty, a client of the firm who was facing tax fraud charges.

“I certainly didn’t know who he [Tony Mokbel] was or that he was of any kind of notoriety or otherwise,” she said.

By the early 2000s, Ms Gobbo was working as a barrister and “doing bail applications for almost every big drug arrest in Melbourne”.

She said it was then that she began experiencing pressure from underworld figures and clients, including Mokbel, with whom she said she had many “aggressive, terse” conversations.

“A lot of screaming phone calls, a lot of directions, specifically being directed to not appear for Mr Moran on the basis I was not part of his crew, I was apparently part of the Mokbel crew,” she said.

Andrew ’Benji’ Veniamin was the right-hand man of drug trafficker Carl Williams

Despite this, Ms Gobbo appeared to have a close relationship with her gangland war clients, telling the court Mokbel and Williams were among the visitors she received when she was hospitalised at the Epworth with a hole in her heart in 2004.

Ms Gobbo told the court while she had never been in a sexual relationship with Williams, she attended his daughter’s christening in December 2003, which she labelled “a poor decision”.

In 2003, Ms Gobbo said she was forewarned by her clients and “people who were on the periphery” about certain murders of Melbourne underworld figures.

“It was kind of wink wink, nudge nudge, don’t be near this person, don’t have a coffee with this person, don’t be in public with this person,” she said.

“And then lo and behold, they would be murdered.”

Ms Gobbo was recruited by police and she fed them information about her clients while acting as their criminal defence barrister, a practice that, once revealed, led to a multimillion-dollar royal commission into the management of police informants.

She described the moment she received a call from a journalist in March 2014 to inform her she was going to be outed as a police informer in a front-page newspaper story the following day.

She said she telephoned her liaison officer at Victoria Police, who told her the force would not be seeking an injunction to stop the publication.

“I don’t know if I can repeat the words I used in a public forum,” Ms Gobbo said when asked about her response. “I was pretty upset.”

She said while Victoria Police ultimately did seek an injunction, it was not until after midnight that night.

Earlier, Ms Gobbo told the court her first encounter with police was one afternoon back in September 1993 when she was a law and arts student at Melbourne University.

She said officers escorted her from university to her Carlton house, which she shared with her then-boyfriend, Brian Wilson, whom officers described as a “hardened street dealer”.

Officers raided the house and found a small amount of “green vegetable matter” and amphetamines in her bedroom, as well as more significant amounts of drugs in another room that Ms Gobbo denied knowing anything about.

Following the incident, she said, she received a 12-month good behaviour bond without conviction.

Ms Gobbo told the court that at the time she had “believed police could do no wrong” and that they were “honest, trustworthy people”.

Her testimony continues on Thursday.