Top cop warned Gobbo would be murdered

Simon Overland used Nicola Gobbo as a witness after being warned she would be murdered.

Former top cop Simon Overland. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Victoria’s former top cop Simon Overland used defence barrister turned informant Nicola Gobbo as a witness in the murder case against former detective Paul Dale after being warned by one of her police handlers it would ­almost certainly get her killed.

“Corruption trumps everything,” Mr Overland is said to have told the handler, according to a statement tendered to the Lawyer X royal commission.

In a further, startling revelation, Ms Gobbo’s handler ­accused Jeff Pope, the deputy commissioner of the Australian Electoral Commission and a former Victoria Police assistant commissioner, of disbanding the unit that managed Ms Gobbo and other high-risk informants to prevent his sexual relationship with Ms Gobbo from ­becoming known.

Nicola Gobbo.

The handler, a retired detective with more than 30 years’ ­experience and extensive commendations, is testifying to the Lawyer X royal commission under the pseudonym Sandy White. In an 83-page statement, he savaged the senior ranks of Victoria Police, accusing them of terminating the source development unit without proper explanation and destroying the reputation of SDU staff.

“I am astounded by the fact that neither I nor any other member of the SDU has ever been consulted about the alle­gations arising out of our management of Ms Gobbo as a human source,’’ he said.

The royal commission has been told that Mr Overland, as Victoria Police assistant commissioner for crime, personally endorsed a decision in late 2005 to recruit Ms Gobbo, a defence lawyer who represented a line-up of notorious gangland figures, as a police informant to bring down Tony Mokbel’s drug cartel.

Mr White recalled that he and superintendent Tony Biggin confronted Mr Overland about a plan hatched to use Ms Gobbo as a crown witness against Mr Dale, a former police detective suspected of being ­involved in the murder of another police informant, Terence Hodson.

“Both Superintendent Biggin and myself were opposed to the transition of Ms Gobbo from a source to a witness and strongly presented our opinion to assistant commissioner Simon Overland,’’ Mr White said.

“We were both of the belief that if Ms Gobbo was made a witness, then the fact that she had been a human source would be revealed, most probably in a court environment, and that she would be totally compromised.

“There was little doubt in my mind that this would lead to her murder by criminals who had been the subject of her ­informing.”

Mr White said the then head of the Purana taskforce, detective ­inspector Jim O’Brien, also made his objections clear to Mr Overland. “I recall assistant commissioner Overland telling me he understood our position but that the source was potentially useful in a very serious corruption investigation involving an ex-police member named Paul Dale,’’ Mr White said.

“(He) told me that corruption trumps everything and that public confidence in the police force was more important than the compromise issues surrounding Ms Gobbo.

“I believe assistant commissioner Overland thought that suitable security arrangements could be made to protect Ms Gobbo.”

The decision to use Ms Gobbo as a witness against Mr Dale, the former police detective to whom she had provided legal advice over many years, caused Ms Gobbo to be deregistered as an informant and triggered a bitter dispute between the barrister and Victoria Police that culminated in a $2.8 million legal settlement and public ­exposure of the Lawyer X scandal.

The murder case against Mr Dale never went to trial.

Mr Overland has not testified to the royal commission and did not respond to questions from The Australian. He quit as Victoria Police chief commissioner in 2011 and currently works as the chief executive of a local government council north of Melbourne.

The SDU, formed in 2005 to manage high-risk informants, was disbanded in 2013 following a ­review by former Victoria Police chief commissioner Neil Comrie and a damning review of the covert services division commissioned in 2012 by Mr Pope.

Mr White said he still did not know why the SDU was terminated. Among possible reasons he listed in his statement was Mr Pope’s ­desire to prevent disclosure of his alleged affair with Ms Gobbo.

Documents tendered to the royal commission show Ms Gobbo was secretly recorded making the allegation in a conversation with two detectives in October 2011.

Mr Pope used Ms Gobbo as an informant years earlier and was a member of the steering committee that oversaw the Petra taskforce investigation into Mr Dale.

Mr Pope testified to the royal commission three months ago that he did not have an affair with Ms Gobbo. In a 2011 sworn affidavit, he declared: “I have never had a sexual, personal or any sort of inappropriate relationship with Witness F (Ms Gobbo).” Mr White told the commission the allegation ended Mr Pope’s ­career with Victoria Police. “I recall being told that assistant commissioner Pope was invited into deputy commissioner Graham Ashton’s office one day for a fireside chat and 10 minutes later he had resigned.”

Mr White said he was not interviewed for either the Comrie report or the review into covert services and he only recently discovered he and other members of the SDU were the subject of a corruption investigation.

“Neither I nor any member of the SDU has ever been spoken to about this,’’ he said. “The reputation of a police officer is the ­single most important asset of his or her career and it is clear now, in 2019, that our reputations within Victoria Police were being ­destroyed behind our backs.”

He said SDU members had been “treated like criminals” since the Comrie report and recalled the prophetic words of one of the SDU managers, superintendent Paul Sheridan, who told him after the SDU was disbanded: “There was a train coming down the line headed straight for Victoria Police and it was going to be a major ­embarrassment.”

The hearing continues.