Lawyer X: barrister was belle of the police ball

The blurred boundaries of barrister Nicola Gobbo’s professional, secret and social lives are detailed.

Lawyer Nicola Gobbo. Picture: Ian Currie

Defence barrister Nicola Gobbo went from being an “eager’’ police informant to the belle of the homicide squad ball and the ­occasional lover of a police officer who first registered her as a source.

The blurred boundaries of Ms Gobbo’s professional, secret and social lives, detailed in evidence to the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, included her providing personal legal advice to the same police handler she’d had sex with.

An insight into Ms Gobbo’s dealings with Victoria Police was provided to the royal commission by Detective Senior Sergeant Tim Argall, who met her as a young constable and maintained a relationship with her over the next 10 years.

Sergeant Argall told the royal commission that when he was introduced to Ms Gobbo by his sergeant, she was a law graduate who seemed “eager to participate’’ in a police sting against her drug-dealing boyfriend.

“When it came to using the covert operative she was excited about that,’’ Sergeant Argall said.

Sergeant Argall said his sergeant, Trevor Ashton, appeared to have previously dealt with Ms Gobbo and was “the driver’’ behind a 1995 decision to register her as a source for Operation Scorn, a covert operation targeting convicted drug trafficker and suspected gun runner Brian Wilson. After that operation failed to secure a conviction, Ms Gobbo developed a social relationship with Sergeant Argall. This included regular drinking sessions, dinner, invitations to the homicide squad ball and at least one “episode of physical intimacy’’.

Asked how she came to attend the homicide squad ball, Sergeant Argall said: “I think I invited her on one occasion and I think after that she probably invited herself. She was a regular at the functions.

“By that stage she was a well-known criminal barrister. I’m sure the whole squad would have known who she was.’’

Sergeant Argall said that while he was working on a homicide taskforce, he formed a friendship with Paul Dale, a police detective later implicated by Ms Gobbo in the 2004 murder of police informant Terence Hodson.

Sergeant Argall told the royal commission that he, Mr Dale and Ms Gobbo regularly socialised together. In 2003, when Mr Dale was facing drug charges, Sergeant Argall sought advice from Ms Gobbo about his relationship with Mr Dale. The charges against Mr Dale were later dropped.

The royal commission has begun hearing evidence from Jeffrey Pope, a former Victoria Police assistant commissioner who now works as the Australian Electoral Commission’s deputy electoral commissioner.

Mr Pope and Detective Inspector Gavan Segrave registered Ms Gobbo as a human source for a second time in 1999. The royal commission was provided evidence that Mr Pope’s relationship with Ms Gobbo also became personal. Internal police reports from the time show that Ms Gobbo contacted him to help him with his law studies. Mr Pope told the royal commission he had no recollection of meeting Ms Gobbo before 1999. He said his dealings with her about his law studies were to establish a rapport with an informant. Ms Gobbo’s 1999 registration as a police informant came after she met with Mr Segrave, Mr Pope and drug squad detectives at a South Melbourne pub and offered to implicate in money laundering and fraud a prominent law firm partner who hired her as a junior solicitor.

The allegations against her former boss included defrauding Legal Aid and helping drug-dealing clients transfer and conceal their criminal proceeds.

By January 2000, the operation was brought to an end. “She was not able to provide the information she had originally promised,’’ Mr Segrave told the hearing.

Mr Segrave agreed it was “very unusual’’ for a defence lawyer to provide information to police. He testified he did not know about her history as a police informant before 1999 and agreed that in 2010, when he was advising then chief commissioner Simon Overland about a lawsuit brought against Victoria Police by Ms Gobbo, he made a “conscious decision’’ not to divulge his previous dealings with her.

Contemporaneous notes kept by Mr Segrave and Mr Pope indicate that her 1999 registration was approved by the senior officer in charge of the Victoria Police Asset Recovery Squad, then Inspector Superintendent Brett Curran.

Mr Curran is a former adviser to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and is the current chief of staff to Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton.

He is yet to provide evidence to the royal commission, which continues before commissioner ­Margaret Mc­Murdo.