Lawyer X Royal Commission: Victoria police withheld documents in breach of orders
Royal commission reveals police identified hundreds of documents relevant to the inquiry and withheld them, in breach of orders.
A forensic investigation by the Lawyer X Royal Commission has revealed that Victoria Police identified hundreds, if not thousands of documents relevant to the inquiry and withheld them for three months in breach of orders to produce.
Commissioner Margaret McMurdo today demanded an explanation from police command about why the documents were not produced when they were first identified and said the delay had made the work of her Commission more difficult and would require the recalling of witnesses.
Ms McMurdo told the hearing that an examination of the metadata underpinning 2290 documents produced by police on the eve of this week’s testimony from Nicola Gobbo’s police handlers revealed that about 400 were opened and reviewed by police in April.
Police on Tuesday night dumped on the Commission a further tranche of emails relating to Ms Gobbo’s handlers.
Ms McMurdo said the delay was not satisfactory.
“The metadata underlying the documents reveals that Victoria Police identified a significant number of these documents many months ago,’’ the Commissioner told the senior counsel for Victoria Police, Saul Holt QC.
“Despite that Victoria Police was clearly aware of these documents at this time, they were only produced at the weekend.”
Ms McMurdo said some of the documents should have been produced under the very first notice to disclose issued by the Royal Commission in January.
The failure of Victoria Police to uphold its disclosure requirement has been a source of ongoing tensions and frustration within the Royal Commission.
It has meant that counsel questioning police witnesses have in some cases had little or no time to review material prior to their testimony and hampered the effort of the Royal Commission to get to the bottom of the Lawyer X saga.
Commissioner McMurdo has issued repeated warnings to Victoria Police about delays in the production of documents.
The latest warning comes as the Commission continues to hear testimony from Sandy White, a pseudonym given to one of Ms Gobbo’s police handlers attached to the highly secretive Source Development Unit established by then Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland.
The former members of the SDU, a unit disbanded in 2013 in response to the Lawyer X scandal, are expected to detail the information provided by Ms Gobbo and how it was used to convict some of Australia’s most notorious criminals including drug boss Tony Mokbel.
Sole survivor tells court that mushroom cooker ‘refused’ help to serve meal at fateful lunch
The only surviving guest of fatal lunch has told a Victorian court host Erin Paterson was reluctant to allow guests to look in her pantry.
No rest until Obeid’s millions tracked down, says premier
Chris Minns has promised the state’s crime commission that his government would empower it with resources and even legislative changes to ensure it went after Eddie Obeid’s corrupt $30m haul.