If you're just joining us, here is what you need to know about the royal commission's final report into notorious barrister-turned-police-informer Nicola Gobbo, and the role of Victoria Police in the legal scandal arising from Melbourne's bloody gangland war.
- The commission, led by former judge Margaret McMurdo, has recommended the establishment of a special investigator to consider whether criminal charges should be brought against current and former members of Victoria Police, as well as Ms Gobbo herself.
- The final report, which is four volumes long and runs to more than 1000 pages, is a stinging indictment of the conduct of Victoria Police and their most prolific informer.
- Some of Victoria's most distinguished crime fighters from its current and former ranks could be referred to the special investigator and face prosecution.
- The convictions or findings of guilt of 1011 people may have been affected by Victoria Police's use of Ms Gobbo as a human source. The commission has released the names of 124 affected people, of which around 70 are still in jail.
- The commission could not conclusively determine whether 12 other "potential Gobbos" - legal professionals with obligations of confidentiality or privilege - may have inappropriately provided information against clients and others, because Victoria Police has kept secret 11 human source files. It has called on the government to appoint an independent auditor to get to the bottom of the enduring question.
- Interestingly, the commission has stopped short of recommending a total ban on using lawyers as informers.
Latest updates
This brings our rolling coverage of the royal commission's final report to an end. But the handing down of the report is not the end of the Gobbo saga.
Apart from the looming appointment of a special investigator to examine whether criminal charges should be laid against Nicola Gobbo or Victoria Police, there remains a significant and growing number of appeals against convictions for former Gobbo clients.
Nicola Gobbo, the former barrister who became a police informer.
At least five appeals are already under way, and more are expected to follow in the wake of the royal commission's findings.
And two former Gobbo clients who have already had their convictions quashed, Faruk Orman and Zlate Cvetanovski, are the spearhead for a number of "affected persons" who will also seek financial compensation from the state government after spending years in prison.
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The commission is satisfied that 1011 people have cases that may have been affected by Victoria Police's use of former barrister Nicola Gobbo as a human source.
But the commission’s findings do not exclude the possibility that other cases may have been affected by Victoria Police’s use of Ms Gobbo as a human source.
The commission is satisfied that from the time of Ms Gobbo’s third registration as an informer through to when Victoria Police stopped receiving information from her in 2010, some of the risks were obvious and known, or at least should have been known, to police, including that:
- the use of Ms Gobbo as a human source may be disclosed, either through court processes or otherwise;
- at least a proportion of the information she provided to Victoria Police in relation to her clients was likely to be confidential or privileged; and
- miscarriages of justice might eventuate from the use of a lawyer as a human source to inform on their own clients.
The commission does not accept that Victoria Police acted with appropriate speed to:
- inform itself of the scope of the problems arising from Ms Gobbo’s use, by reviewing all information she provided to police and determining whether and how that information was used in investigations and prosecutions; or
- alert external oversight bodies or prosecuting authorities about the extent of the potential problem
The commission says the approach Victoria Police took demonstrated a reluctance to accept responsibility for what had occurred and to be fully transparent about the size and scope of the problem.
Victoria’s Chief Police Commissioner, Shane Patton, has said police will cooperate with a special investigator appointed to assess whether officers committed crimes in their dealings with supergrass Nicola Gobbo.
Disciplinary action will be left to the special investigator and police will not pre-emptively suspend or sack officers named in the commission's final report, he said.
The police chief said the royal commission into police’s use of gangland lawyer Ms Gobbo as an informer has so far cost police $61 million.
Let me draw your attention to a piece by legal affairs reporter Tammy Mills who has closely followed the royal commission for two years, and the Gobbo affair for even longer.
In it, Tammy answers the question: What on earth is the Nicola Gobbo story all about?
She looks at why have police fought so hard to keep elements of this scandal secret, how it all came to light and what this means for Gobbo's former clients.
Criminal defence lawyer Ruth Parker says she no longer uses the name Gobbo to describe the legal scandal that has engulfed Victoria Police.
She now calls this the "Purana scandal" after the taskforce that recruited Gobbo in a desperate bid to end Melbourne's bloody gangland war.
Ms Parker, from Galbally Parker Lawyers, represented former Gobbo clients Faruk Orman and Zlate Cvetanovski who succeeded in having their convictions quashed this year. Both men walked free from jail after more than 10 years behind bars.
Faruk Orman, with his lawyers Ruth Parker, left, and Carly Lloyd, right, on the steps of the Supreme Court after his release from prison.Credit:Eddie Jim
"Gobbo may have been the cover story. But she is one person. Purana were many. They were the most powerful and well-funded taskforce within the Victoria Police at the time. They were touted as heroes in the gangland war. Now their legacy will be determined by what they did and what they never wanted us to know about," she writes for The Age today.
"When I am asked what the legacy of the Purana scandal is ... my response is that they will be remembered as the police who took the trust out of the justice system ...
"If there is one thing that Chief Commissioner Shane Patton and I can agree on is that there was clearly a cultural problem within Victoria Police during the period that Purana undermined the criminal justice system. Where we differ is that I don’t think this problem is consigned to the past. So long as these Purana officers are still in the force, then that cultural problem still exists."
In short, we don't know where Ms Gobbo is, as she's in hiding.
She first emerged from hiding for an interview in December last year with ABC's 7.30 program, but her location was never revealed.
Nicola Gobbo pictured in 2010.Credit:Joe Armao
Ms Gobbo gave evidence to the royal commission over two days in February this year, from an unknown location over the phone after her lawyers won her the right to hide her face.
The fact that she remains in hiding makes the practicalities of charging her over any criminal conduct difficult. She may well sue Victoria Police again too.
In her first lawsuit in 2010 she asked for $20 million in compensation and received a $2.88 million settlement after her double life imploded. Ms Gobbo was turned from informer to witness (meaning she'd have to publicly give evidence in court) in the failed case against Paul Dale for the murders of Hodson, who was also a police informer, and his wife Christine.
The Age reported earlier this year that Ms Gobbo has already briefed a legal team to launch fresh civil action.
Here is Shane Patton's full statement in response to the royal commission's findings:
I would like to make clear today Victoria Police’s absolute acknowledgement that the management of Nicola Gobbo as a human source and the manner in which the information she provided was used, was a profound failure by our organisation that must not, and will not, ever be repeated.
As Victoria Police has previously stated, it was an indefensible interference in the lawyer-client relationship that is a fundamental requirement for the proper functioning of our criminal justice system.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton.Credit:Eddie Jim
Victoria Police has a proud history of keeping the community safe, built on the foundations of mutual respect and trust. This was a breach of that trust.
As Chief Commissioner, I have apologised to the courts and to the community for what occurred and I do so again today. I also apologise for our failure to identify and disclose what was occurring at the time.
It has often been conveyed in the media that Victoria Police has failed to take responsibility. I want to be abundantly clear that I do not believe, and nor has it ever been submitted by Victoria Police, that ‘the ends justified the means’. That is not my position.
While the police at the time were certainly grappling with extraordinarily challenging and dangerous times, I reiterate that the ends, did not, and never do, justify the means.
Victoria Police has come a long way since the events under examination at this Royal Commission took place. Significant reforms have been introduced that have overhauled our human source management practices. As a result, our systems for dealing with a human source who may have obligations of confidentiality and privilege are vastly improved.
As the commissioner noted, we are one of the few Australian law enforcement agencies that adopts specific rules and safeguards for the use of human sources involving legal obligations of confidentiality or privilege.
In parallel, there has been a concerted and committed drive to strengthen our culture over recent years, in which the highest standards of conduct are expected of every police officer.
In today’s Victoria Police, what happened with Ms Gobbo simply could not occur. That said, this royal commission has identified areas in which Victoria Police can further improve, and as Chief Commissioner I am committed to ensuring these opportunities are fully realised.
To that end I have initiated a new taskforce, Taskforce Reset, that will lead our organisational response on all matters arising out of the [commission].
The taskforce will report directly to Deputy Commissioner Wendy Steendam and will be provided with all the resources necessary to ensure it is able to deliver fully on its remit.
This royal commission has been a deeply difficult experience for some of our serving and veteran police officers who have been required to reflect closely on the decisions they made up to 27 years ago.
It was a failure of Victoria Police governance and management that our police officers were operating in a complex and high-risk environment without the training, resources, policies and support that they needed to do their jobs properly.
The royal commission has shown that our framework for the management of human sources was at the time wholly insufficient for the task at hand and did not provide the robust structure needed to ensure better decisions were being made.
Victoria Police will cooperate fully with any further criminal and discipline inquiries which arise because of this royal commission into the conduct of individual officers.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the enormous amount of work done by Victoria Police in support of this commission.
At the start in December 2018, Victoria Police committed to cooperating fully and we have done just that. It has been an enormous and challenging task and has involved searching through millions of emails and documents spanning 27 years.
In total Victoria Police has:
- Identified, located and searched over 52 million records
- Individually reviewed approximately 600,000 emails
- Produced 980 diary entries totalling 22,000 pages
- Transcribed and produced 230 hours of recordings
- Produced in total 75,000 documents totalling 650,000 pages
While we have had to be conscious of the significant safety risks arising to members of the community from the information contained in these documents, we have worked tirelessly to support the work of the commission and searched for and produced documents regardless of whether they reflected well or poorly on Victoria Police or any current or former officers.
If you're a Melburnian – or a fan of the TV series Underbelly – chances are you're familiar with the anti-gangland Purana taskforce.
The commission's report says Nicola Gobbo represented the interest of the gangland taskforce, rather than her clients, particularly when it came to a couple of key underworld turncoats.
Then-Senior Sergeant Stuart Bateson leads members of the Purana taskforce away from Melbourne Magistrates Court in 2003.Credit:Michael Rayner
One of them, whose real identity cannot be revealed, was the first of the gangland criminals to "break the wall of silence" and turn police witness.
Known as "Mr McGrath" during the commission, the evidence he gave was valuable against the likes of notorious gangland boss Carl Williams. Ms Gobbo represented Mr McGrath after he was arrested.
Although officers said Mr McGrath was already willing to cooperate with police, the commission in its final report today says Ms Gobbo made revisions to his evidence, in the presence of police, without taking instructions from him.
Her advice to him also prompted him to change his account and strengthen the police case, the commission's report says.
Had her full role been disclosed, Commissioner Margaret McMurdo says it may have significantly and favourably changed the legal position of those he incriminated, who Ms Gobbo then also went on to represent.
As for another key gangland witness, known only by the pseudonym Mr Thomas, the commission says Ms Gobbo acted as his lawyer and kept her police handlers up to date about his mental state and attitude towards assisting them.
"She was clearly representing the interests of the Purana taskforce rather than providing independent advice in her discussions with Mr Thomas," the commission states.
Ms Gobbo told her handlers that she advised Mr Thomas, who also gave evidence against Williams, that "just giving up Carl Williams will not be enough" and he'd need to give Purana "everything".
The commission's final report also explores why and how Nicola Gobbo became an informer.
The patterns of behaviour, Commissioner Margaret McMurdo noted, were discernible even at the early stage of her involvement with police from 1995 to 1999.
"Her motivation was in part self-protective," the report says.
Nicola Gobbo during an interview with the ABC's 7.30 program last year.Credit:ABC
In 1995, Ms Gobbo was first registered as an informer while she was still studying law at Melbourne University after she supplied information to police about her boyfriend, who was under investigation for drug trafficking.
It was clearly in her interest to help police then, Ms McMurdo said, as she would be dealt with leniently.
This was also the case when she decided to dob in another lawyer to police over allegations they were laundering money, leading to her second registration as an informer in 1999.
But Ms McMurdo writes, Ms Gobbo was not just willing to assist, but "conspicuously eager to do so".
"Indeed, she appeared 'over' and 'confident' in her disclosures. She did more than simply respond to police inquiries; she cultivated and engineered opportunities to meet with and communicate information to police," the commissioner states.
"She seemed to relish her social contact with them. She sought to do more than neutrally communicate information, often enthusiastically and proactively suggesting areas and people to investigate."
When Ms Gobbo gave evidence to the commission hearings last year, she spoke of the need to feel "valued" and to be the "holder of every bit of information".
She also pointed to her 'Type A' personality that drove her to be the "best human source she could be" and to the death of her father when she was young, which the commission noted made her long for the approval of older, especially male figures.
Victoria's police chief Shane Patton has announced a new taskforce will be established to respond to the findings of the royal commission.
In responding to the scathing report released by Commissioner Margaret McMurdo today, Mr Patton acknowledged the Gobbo scandal was a "profound failure by our organisation". Mr Patton's predecessor Graham Ashton has been slammed by the commission for failing to act on the matter back in 2011.
Victoria Police Commissioner Shane Patton. Credit:Justin McManus
"It must not and will not happen again," he said, adding the action of police were an "indefensible interference of the lawyer-client relationship".
However, Mr Patton disputed suggestions that Victoria Police had justified their use of Ms Gobbo as an informer at a time when they were desperate to end Melbourne's bloody gangland war. He insisted police have never said the "ends justified the means".
The new taskforce - dubbed Taskforce Reset - will address all the matters raised in the commission, Mr Patton said.
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2020-11-30 06:31:00Z
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