Nicola Gobbo was a young and vulnerable barrister “looking for a way out” of dealing with gangland clients, such as Tony Mokbel, when police saw an opportunity, her lawyers claim.
At 25 years old, the youngest woman in Victoria to sign the bar roll suddenly found herself “neck deep” in the underworld and feared for her personal safety and wellbeing.
“She was under enormous pressure and looking for a way out, a hand of friendship,” her junior barrister, Jessie Taylor, told the supreme court on Monday.
“This was a prized catch for those seeking to dismantle the gangland wars.
“She asked police for help, they laid the bait … and she started talking.”
Gobbo’s senior barrister, Tim Tobin KC, said as the body count for Melbourne’s notorious gangland wars continued to mount in the early 2000s, “considerable pressure” was heaped on to detectives.
The killings kept coming and they were not getting solved, so detectives became desperate, and caution and practice protocols went by the wayside, he said.
“The plaintiff became Mokbel’s golden girl just as their criminal empire was taking off,” he told the court.
He said she had no idea she had been registered as a police informant twice.
She found out more than two decades later, during a royal commission.
Taylor accused Victoria police of “grooming” Gobbo when they took her on as a police informant, by exploiting her vulnerabilities and their position to use her as a source.
She said officers made promises to Gobbo that could not be kept, including that they would protect her and that her identity would never be revealed.
“That failure over a significant period of time can only be described as negligence of a high order,” Taylor said.
“The immediacy and flagrancy with which those promises were broken is quite breathtaking.”
When she became their source for a third time, in 2005, she was forthcoming, open and unfiltered, providing police an “overwhelming” volume of information and intelligence, Taylor said.
after newsletter promotion
“The individuals Gobbo was connected to had a proven capacity to murder and there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that she could be murdered,” Taylor said.
She said in the past five years Gobbo had been painted as “controlling, malicious and manipulative”.
“But the evidence in this case will not bear that out,” Taylor said.
“Our case is not that our client has never put a foot wrong, far from it.
“But this court will hear evidence about the power dynamic between a lonely, isolated young woman and the mighty machinery of the state’s police force when they each have something to offer.”
Gobbo is seeking damages from the state of Victoria in the judge-alone civil trial, which began on Monday.
She claims officers put her safety at risk in using her as a police informer and that her unmasking as Informer 3838 and “Lawyer X” had damaged her health and career.
The gangland barrister turned informant is expected to give evidence on Wednesday, but will do so from a remote location and her image will be shielded from public view.
Once Gobbo’s team have finished their evidence, Victoria police will deliver their defence case.
Source: www.theguardian.com