Victoria Police’s top lawyer says “relentless” gangland investigators would call Nicola Gobbo as a witness if they needed, as he branded the decision to use a lawyer as an informant “unthinkable”.
Legal director Fin McRae became emotional as he told the commission into police management of informants on Thursday that he had ignored the attacks on Ms Gobbo by detectives as he focused on police negotiating the terms of the gangland lawyer’s transition from informant to witness.
“They will never stop, they are relentless, they would call her as a witness tomorrow and again, that is a tangential issue,” he said.
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“If I was following up the conspiracy theories of investigators, whether she’s stabbing herself in the thigh with a pen or matters like that, I would be wasting the public’s money.”
Ms Gobbo was a criminal defence barrister known as Lawyer X who represented underworld heavies such as Tony Mokbel while simultaneously snitching on her clients to Victoria Police at the height of Melbourne’s gangland wars.
The commission heard Mr McRae was overseeing the negotiations of Ms Gobbo’s exit package in late 2009, with the lawyer seeking $20m in light of the serious risk to her life and the end of her career if she appeared as a witness against drug squad detective Paul Dale for the 2004 murder of Terrence and Christine Hodson. Mr McRae said he wasn’t told Ms Gobbo was an informant, just that she was a witness in a police murder investigation.
“I think it’s unthinkable,” he said when asked by assisting counsel Chris Winneke QC what he thought about using a barrister as an informant.
The commission previously heard Ms Gobbo demanded $30m or a percentage of the assets she helped Victoria Police seize, which the barrister estimated to be worth up to $80m.
On Thursday, assisting counsel Megan Tittensor said the barrister threatened in a letter to then police commissioner Simon Overland to spill the beans on her double-dealing to the current affairs program 60 Minutes .
Ms Tittensor asked Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius: “That’s a threat by Ms Gobbo that if you’re not going to take her seriously, she’s going to go public … That she’d been indicating she’ll go and speak to the television program 60 Minutes?”
“Yes,” Mr Cornelious answered.
Ms Gobbo never appeared as witness against Mr Dale and successfully sued Victoria Police in 2010 for almost $3m.
The charges against Mr Dale were dropped and he was later further cleared of involvement in the murder by a coronial inquiry.
Reporter
Melbourne
Remy Varga is a reporter at The Australian. She has a Masters in Journalism from UTS and a BA in Modern History and Spanish and Latin American studies. She spends her time stalking politicians on Twitter.
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