Overland, police gave unreliable, dishonest evidence, judge finds in scathing Lawyer X ruling

Victoria Police actively deceived the state’s justice system and its most senior officers gave dishonest evidence over the force’s use of barrister-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo, a judge has found.

A 600-page judgment released on Friday was damning of former chief commissioner Simon Overland and senior police, who Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Fullerton said had given inconsistent, unreliable and “deliberately dishonest” evidence.

She also found that four officers took part in a criminal enterprise to attempt to pervert the course of justice when they improperly used Gobbo to pressure a client to roll on drug baron Tony Mokbel.

Tony Mokbel (left) outside the Supreme Court last month.Credit: AAP

None of the four officers accused of misconduct are expected to face criminal prosecution, but the findings provide a significant boost to Mokbel’s legal bid to have his convictions quashed and walk free from prison before his 30-year sentence is completed.

The Age is prevented from naming the officers because two were members of the source development unit, while the other two launched an appeal on Friday to keep their names a secret, after a judge dismissed their previous application for anonymity until death.

Fullerton, a NSW judge who heard the case to avoid conflict-of-interest concerns in a scandal that has plagued Victoria’s justice system, said she was sceptical about the sworn evidence given by all current and former police officers during the trial.

“I am simply unable to give any weight to the evidence of any of the police witnesses who, in varying ways, sought to extricate themselves,” she said.

Fullerton said evidence from several senior police that they had unilaterally redacted a range of documents to conceal Gobbo’s involvement in several gangland investigations was evidence of a broader pattern of “high-level, deliberate and systemic improper practices”.

“Victoria Police engaged in active deception not only of the courts and agencies in the Victorian system of justice, but of other institutions and agencies,” Fullerton found.

She was particularly critical of Overland and disputed his evidence that he only became aware of Gobbo’s registration as an informer after the fact.

She said Overland had gone to great lengths to justify his inaction, at times providing inherently implausible versions of events, while finding there were also “lingering doubts” about whether he had provided a full, frank and candid account.

“I am unable to conceive of how or why it was not obvious to officers in senior command of Victoria Police (Mr Overland in particular) that there were obvious legal risks (not just risks to Ms Gobbo’s safety) in registering and using her as an informer,” Fullerton wrote.

Former lawyer and police informer Nicola Gobbo.Credit: ABC

She said the former chief commissioner’s failure to ensure Gobbo’s role did not embroil the force in illegal conduct or impropriety was “nothing short of egregious”.

Fullerton found that Victoria Police was complicit in the barrister’s breach of duty to her clients and the course of conduct “grossly improper”, while police also exercised their powers of arrest on two occasions in a way that could undermine the administration of justice.

“I am also satisfied that Ms Gobbo’s multiple breaches of her duty of loyalty to the applicant [Mokbel] and to those of her clients who gave evidence against him was improper, indeed grossly improper, and that the nature and extent of Victoria Police’s complicity in that course of conduct was also grossly improper.”

Former police commissioner Simon Overland (centre) in 2019.Credit: Jason South

The judge stressed that her findings about a joint criminal enterprise were made on the balance of probabilities, a lower bar than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

Last year, then-director of public prosecutions Kerri Judd, KC, refused to bring a criminal prosecution against anyone involved in the Gobbo scandal.

Others caught up in the damning findings include former director of public prosecutions John Champion, who was appointed a Supreme Court judge in 2017. Fullerton found Champion breached his duty of disclosure and made an “error of judgment” by failing to inform the court that Gobbo had been working as a police informer.

She was also scathing of evidence provided by Superintendent Boris Buick, a serving police officer, and found he had “persistently obfuscated” and been “deliberately dishonest”.

Gobbo with Mokbel outside court in 2004. She was Mokbel’s barrister at the time.Credit: Nine

“I might have put that explanation down to naivety were it not for the fact that Mr Buick is legally trained,” Fullerton wrote.

“He was admitted to practise as a lawyer in Victoria in 2000, in the course of which he undertook compulsory study in legal ethics and professional responsibilities of lawyers.”

Buick headed the Purana taskforce investigation that led to the conviction of Faruk Orman over the 2002 murder of gangster Victor Peirce. That conviction was later quashed after the courts found Gobbo’s involvement had contaminated the prosecution case.

However, Fullerton did not find Overland, Buick or Champion were involved in the joint criminal enterprise.

Fullerton also made a series of scathing findings against Gobbo, including deliberate and repeated breaches of her professional duties to clients, while also deriving financial benefits from her association with Mokbel.

“She also enjoyed both material benefits the applicant (Mokbel) was able to provide and the perverse thrill of being a high‑profile lawyer of a suspected member of the criminal underworld, with the dubious status and public profile that accompanied that position,” Fullerton wrote of Gobbo.

Gobbo did not give evidence during the trial regarding the conduct of police or prosecutors in the case, while Mokbel gave evidence over four days earlier this year.

The Court of Appeal will use Fullerton’s findings to decide whether Mokbel’s appeal should succeed.

On Wednesday, Supreme Court judge John Beach shot down the applications of two police officers to suppress their names after Fullerton found the two men had met Gobbo to help turn a key witness – Mokbel’s drug cook – against the drug kingpin during a meeting on St Kilda Road.

In documents, the officers expressed “distress” in learning about the findings. One is undergoing psychiatrist treatment for health conditions, and the other has been in regular discussions with his doctor for the past four years about the effect the “Nicola Gobbo matters were having on his mental health”.

The suppression ruling prompted the pair to launch an 11th-hour appeal on Friday afternoon to keep their names suppressed.

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