Taxpayers cop $20m bill for axed Lawyer X legal unit

Victorians have been left with a massive bill from a special unit axed without a single criminal charge being laid over Lawyer X.

Nicola Gobbo. Picture: ABC

The Lawyer X unit established to probe potential criminal conduct by police cost Victorian taxpayers about $20m before it was abolished last week.

The Office of Special Investigator, which collapsed last year after the state’s top prosecutor rejected its briefs of evidence, ceased operations last Friday.

State Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes’ office has confirmed the cost of running the OSI, which was led by former High Court Geoffrey Nettle KC, during its two-year life was $20m.

Announcing the establishment of the OSI in June 2021, Ms Symes described the unit delivering on a key finding of the royal commission into the Lawyer X scandal in which gang war lawyer Nicola Gobbo was recruited by police to spy on her own clients.

Ms Symes described the OSI as an “important step forward” in restoring confidence in the justice system. “We’re getting on with the work of restoring the ­integrity of the justice system by implementing the royal commission’s recommendations – ensuring our justice system has Victorians’ confidence and trust,” she said.

But the government didn’t arm the OSI with the power to unilaterally lay criminal charges, and Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd refused to lay charges on the OSI’s behalf.

The dispute sparked a legal stoush between Mr Nettle and Ms Judd and triggered the collapse of the OSI.

“I had concluded that the chances of the director approving Charlie (an OSI investigation into multiple police officers) or any other charges that OSI might submit were now effectively nil, which made it a waste of time and money for OSI to persist,” Mr Nettle said in a special report tabled in parliament last June.

Senior legal figures say the impact of the scandal is still being felt in Victoria’s criminal justice system almost 10 years after the Lawyer X story emerged.

Former chief crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert KC launched a scathing attack on the failure to lay charges over the scandal.

“Gobbo, despite her willingness to plead guilty, was never charged. Senior members of the Victoria Police hierarchy have never been charged,” Mr Silbert said.

“Millions of dollars of taxpayer money has been wasted and nobody seems to care. The reputation of Victoria Police, once the nation’s finest, has been trashed. There is now an aura of corruption enveloping the whole of Victoria’s criminal justice ­system.”