Lawyer X scandal: gangland war gamble puts police reputations at risk

Using a lawyer as an informant was fraught with danger for police.

A forensics officer looks at a bullet on the ground at the scene of the shooting of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro.

Melbourne’s gangland war was ­active but politically manageable when Jason Moran and Pasquale “Little Pat” Barbaro climbed into the steel blue Mitsubishi ­people-mover outside the Cross Keys Hotel in the Victorian capital’s north.

It was 10.40am on June 21, 2003, and 14 gangsters were ­already gone, including the Underbelly villain Alphonse Gangitano, Jason’s brother Mark and suspected police killer Victor Peirce.

But in their own way Melbourne’s law enforcement agencies were quietly comfortable.

The multi-billion-dollar drug and standover industry was dealing with its own, acting like a self-cleaning oven, as victims kept piling up before being neatly dispatched by mainly Catholic priests in inner-city churches. Most were career criminals who profited from amphetamines and cocaine, full of piss and wind, and who mattered little to all but their most intimate friends and family.

This changed the moment Moran and Barbaro’s killer, acting on drug lord Carl Williams’s ­orders, went full Quentin Taran­tino in front of five children in the van as scores of others mingled after Saturday morning Auskick in Essendon North.

Blood, bone and brains ricocheted throughout the vehicle as the killer struck with a shotgun and pistol before running from the scene.

Until that morning, the gangland war was barely on the political radar.

But all politics is local and the Auskick backdrop — and the mindless brutality of the murders — resonated in ways that the 14 previous killings hadn’t.

Rowland Legg, the senior ­detective who made it to the scene, later recalled the destructive mess the shooter left behind.

“There was relief and astonishment that the children in the back of the van were totally physically unharmed,’’ he said.

Fast forward 15 years and the legacy of the Moran-Barbaro murders still resonates.

It is exactly what Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton was referring to on Monday when trying to explain the scandal of Lawyer X and why senior police gambled with engaging a criminal barrister as a supergrass to intervene in the gangland war.

That cavalier decision has now cascaded years later into a royal commission, placing the reputation of more than a dozen senior police on the thin blue line.

Ashton talked about the climate on the streets 15 years ago when trying to explain why Lawyer X was used by police to solve potentially hundreds of cases.

The force, he stressed, was under the pump.

“Melbourne was in the grip of what is now widely known as the gangland wars,’’ he said.

“Over the preceding 12 months, numerous people had been murdered, some in very public locations, and high-profile criminals were vying for control of drug ­operations that were inflicting ­serious harm on the Victorian community. The risk to the community at this time was significant. It was accordingly a desperate and dangerous time, and a genuine sense of urgency was enveloping the criminal justice system, including police.’’

Critically, he added: “Whilst our practices of over a decade ago have come under prolonged and significant criticism, I believe the officers, both current and veteran, who managed the informer and worked on these investigations, acted in good faith. And they can expect to have my continuing support.”

By the time the gangland wars officially ended, 36 people were dead. In 2003, arguably the worst year, a new gangster was turning up dead every eight weeks, culminating in the execution-style killing of Graham “The Munster’’ Kinniburgh, 62, a Carlton Crew veteran who was implicated in Gangitano’s death.

Melbourne's gangland war mayhem revisited.

By the end of that year, Melbourne’s legal precinct was awash with activity as the criminal law ­industry managed an unprecedented lift in activity that had gained international notoriety.

As each gangland body was transported to the morgue, the pressure on police commissioner Christine Nixon intensified, with Labor having been elected in 1999 in no small part because of a strident law and order campaign.

To this day, Nixon rejects The Australian’s consistent demands for a royal commission into the force and its many scandals under her watch.

Lawyer X was acutely aware of the extent to which the gangland war was out of control.

She lamented in court documents the extent to which criminals such as Williams, who killed up to 10 people, were able to go virtually untouched.

She started speaking with the Purana taskforce, which investigated the gangland killings, in 2004, as the gun smoke was still rising above Kinniburgh’s body. A year later it was game on.

“During 2005 I became aware of high-level drug trafficking, money laundering, witness tampering, firearm offences and a ­variety of other serious criminal activity by virtue of the contact I had with certain clients and their crews and supporters,’’ Lawyer X wrote.

“I also watched as police either totally failed to investigate much of this offending or failed in being able to arrest and charge ­offenders.’’

Between 2005 and 2009, Lawyer X became a supergrass like no other, claiming the force arrested and charged 386 people as a result of her work.

But as the High Court ruled, the arrangement with police was utterly fraught, both for the hapless Lawyer X — also known as EF — and the force.

“EF’s actions in purporting to act as counsel for the convicted persons while covertly informing against them were fundamental and appalling breaches of EF’s ­obligations as counsel to her clients and of EF’s duties to the court,’’ it said.

“Likewise, Victoria Police were guilty of reprehensible conduct in knowingly encouraging EF to do as she did and were involved in sanctioning atrocious breaches of the sworn duty of every police officer to discharge all duties imposed on them faithfully and according to law without favour or affection, malice or ill-will.

“As a result, the prosecution of each convicted person was corrupted in a manner which debased fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.’’

Lawyer X’s motivations are confusing.

On the one hand, she says she was concerned about becoming an ­accessory to crimes as she waded, knee-deep, through a double life of hypocritical legal and criminal dung.

On the other, she became exhausted by being exposed to the criminality of drug lord Tony Mokbel’s amphetamines network. Mokbel is serving 30 years’ jail for drug offences and is one of scores of criminals who may walk early as a result of the bungled deal ­between police and Lawyer X.

That no one in senior positions in Victoria Police was awake to the potential debacle of the Lawyer X deal seems unbelievable.

As the gangland war was ­unfolding, however, Victoria Police was undergoing a major cultural upheaval under Nixon’s leadership.

Noel Ashby, who was the ­assistant commissioner in charge of serious crime before he was shifted and replaced by Simon Overland, alluded to a lack of hands-on experience at the top of the force that contrasted with the record of former deputy commissioner Sir Ken Jones.

Sir Ken and Overland became enemies, clashing heavily over the direction of the force under Overland before Sir Ken left Victoria in 2011.

Overland lasted only two years as chief commissioner ­before falling on his sword amid acrimony over his handling of police statistics.

Ashby told The Australian: “If you look at Ken Jones’s CV, he ­actually investigated major crimes. He came through the ranks as a detective, as an operational copper.’

“He had dealt, under British law, with major criminal prosecutions. With the greatest of respect, the others didn’t.

“Overland was brought into Victoria and given absolute ­imprimatur to restructure the crime ­department and do as he wished. He actually didn’t have the skills.’’

Overland has not responded to requests for an interview. Nor has Nixon.

Ron Iddles, a former longstanding homicide squad detective and later police association secretary, suspected the deal with Lawyer X had flies on it.

Iddles says about a dozen senior Victoria Police officers knew a gangland lawyer was being used as an informant and did nothing about it, adding they need to be held to account.

Iddles says he became aware of the issue in 2009 and raised it with his superiors, having been ­requested, he adds, by Overland to deal with Lawyer X.

“I was concerned about it, and it was raised within the office about how a lawyer could be registered as an informer,’’ he told 3AW.

Iddles says the barrister did not give him privileged information about her clients but the background documents she offered meant her statement would ­expose her as a police source, a fact he says he told his supervisors. He told them: “You don’t get this. I can tell you now this will cause a royal commission.’’

“It was always going to come out, I think, and be a mess,” he says.

Iddles says 10 to 15 “very senior police” would have known what was happening.

“So they walked past the ­behaviour but still accepted it,” he says. “It was at a time when the underworld killings were going on, so I think a blind eye was turned on some things.’’

The scandal is multi-layered.

Victoria Police spent two years and millions of dollars attempting to stop Mokbel and the members of his cartel from being told about the unethical, secret double life of Lawyer X, the extent of which was exposed by an Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission investigation conducted by retired judge Murray Kellam QC.

The saga can be reported after the High Court rejected a special leave-to-appeal application by Victoria Police and lifted the blanket suppression orders on the case. The name of the lawyer remains protected by court order.

For Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, there is little downside in calling the royal commission.

He is four years and a million miles from losing the next election.

Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd QC has written to 20 criminals advising them their convictions could be ­affected by the police deal with Lawyer X.

Andrews concedes: “Given that there is the prospect of some very well-known individuals walking free, we think it’s appropriate to have this highest and most formal type of inquiry we can have to give us the answers we need and the certainty that this could never, ever happen again.’’

Like so much of what governments promise, it will be the detail of the royal commission’s terms of reference that will decide the ­extent to which the inquiry will ­rebound on the force leadership, both past and present.

The government’s media statement on Monday stated that it would consider the number of, and extent to which, cases were ­affected by Lawyer X’s conduct and the adequacy or current management processes for informants.

Given that Williams is dead, it’s too late for him to walk. But he knew how to talk and he was ­informing police.

It was widely known in Barwon prison in 2010 that he had been talking to police when he was clubbed to death with the stem of an exercise bike by a fellow inmate.

Like the speed he used to ­market, Williams was cooked ­because word had spread that he had been talking to police, implicating others.

Few mourned Williams. He had killed up to 10 people and ­fuelled the amphetamines industry in Australia.

Don’t be surprised, however, if Victoria Police faces questions about what protections it provided Williams in jail, given that it had leaked he was informing on the underworld.

This doesn’t tend to go down well among criminals.

The gangland war was a desperate time for police but even the perpetrators were worthy of the most basic of human rights.