Lawyer X’s lover Richard Barkho loses bid for freedom

The jailed lover of gangland lawyer and Victoria Police informer Nicola Gobbo has lost his bid to get out of prison early.

Richard Barkho, the jailed lover of Nicola Gobbo. Picture: Suppllied

The jailed lover of gangland lawyer and Victoria Police informer Nicola Gobbo, known as Lawyer X, has lost his bid to get out of prison early. Richard Barkho had sought to appeal against his five-year jail sentence for drug trafficking more than 2.5kg of ice.

He argued he should be granted leave to appeal for a lesser sentence because his partner is a much-publicised informer and former barrister, and he now faces “increasing and volatile hardship” in custody.

His lawyers claimed there were concerns for Barkho’s safety arising from the relationship with the barrister, “who still visits him”.

Nicola Gobbo. Picture: Ian Currie

They also said a life-threatening and disfiguring jail attack in November 2015, when Barkho was cut across the face and throat and required 33 stitches, had worsened the depression he suffered at the time of sentencing. But Court of Appeal judges Phillip Priest and Richard Niall refused Barkho’s application on Wednesday.

The judges said his relationship, and the events surrounding it, do not amount to “fresh evidence” and should not change his sentence.

“What has transpired since the applicant was first sentenced, as a result of his relationship with the former barrister, is not fresh evidence,” the judges said in their ruling.

“The evidence cannot properly be said to ‘throw a different light on circumstances which existed at the time of sentence’.” Ms Gobbo was revealed as “Lawyer X” on March 1 when a suppression order on her identity was lifted.

Known to police as “Informer 3838”, Ms Gobbo was first recruited in 1995 and worked with police until 2009, with drug lord Tony Mokbel and gangland figure Carl Williams among her clients.

By her own admission, her information helped convict hundreds of gangland criminals and drug traffickers.

It is reported that a number of her clients plan to appeal significant jail terms, including Mokbel, who was recently stabbed in jail, and convicted drug trafficker Robert Karam.

AAP