Salvatore Agresta freed ahead of Lawyer X appeal

The Lawyer X scandal has seen another convicted criminal walk free from prison, after more than eight years behind bars.

Salvatore Agresta. Picture: AFP

The Lawyer X scandal has seen another convicted criminal walk free from prison, after more than eight years behind bars.

Appeal court judges granted Salvatore Agresta bail on Monday ahead of his appeal against his conviction over one of the world’s largest ecstasy hauls.

Agresta was jailed in April 2013 for 12 years with a non-parole period of 8½ years after being found guilty by a jury for conspiring to impor­t more than 15 million ecstasy pills in tomato tins from Italy in 2007.

He is set to argue his conviction was tainted because of the involvement of disgraced lawyer turned police informer Nicola Gobbo in the case.

Justices Chris Maxwell and Karin Emerton said it would be an “injustice” if Agresta remained locked up past his non-parole period pending his appeal.

He would have been due for parole on October 12.

With other Lawyer X appeals afoot, the judges said Agresta was unlikely to have his appeal heard until “well into 2021”.

They said he would have to abide by strict bail conditions and offer a $400,000 surety.

Barrister Marcus Dempsey, for Agresta, had told the justices Gobbo’s involvement was “the centrepiece” of their miscarriage of justice appeal application.

“Ms Gobbo, acting for the very man he stood joint trial with, provided key documents, without which there was no case for the prosecution, to the police,” he said.

Mr Dempsey said there was no disclosure of this information to the parties at the time.

Agresta stood trial alongside Rob Karam, who has launched an appeal in the wake of Gobbo being outed as a supergrass.

It has been revealed Gobbo, who was Karam’s lawyer, handed over to police a bill of lading — a shipping document revealing where the ecs­tasy would be delivered at the port — she had secretly obtained from him, which resulted in the arrests and convictions of dozens of accused.

Mr Dempsey noted Agresta was one of the 1011 people the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants said “may well have been affected” by Gobbo’s misconduct.

Justice Maxwell said the case was “indistinguishable” from that of co-accused Zlate Cvetanovski, who in October was released from prison after becoming the second person to be acquitted over Gobbo’s involvement in his conviction.

In July last year, Faruk Orman was the first to use the Lawyer X saga successfully to have his conviction overturned for the 2002 gangland murder of Victor Peirce. He had spent 12 years behind bars.

In Agresta’s case, Michael Wilson, for the DPP, conceded: “We can’t say it is a hopeless appeal bound to fail.” In sentencing him over the tomato tins haul, Judge Betty King described Agresta as one of the “foot soldiers of the conspiracy” in that he did not make decisions.

Herald Sun