Hundreds of criminal convictions — including those meted out to some of Australia’s most notorious gangland figures — hang in the balance, after their defense lawyer was yesterday revealed as a police informant.
Court documents disclosed that a high-profile Melbourne barrister had for years been giving information to Victoria Police, while representing clients such as crime boss Tony Mokbel and six of his associates.
The revelation came after court injunctions were lifted yesterday, blowing the lid off one of the biggest legal scandals to hit the country in years and prompting the authorities to immediately announce a public inquiry.
In a secret court battle spanning more than two years, police had tried to stop state prosecutors from informing the seven people about their barrister’s supergrass role.
They were finally knocked back by the High Court of Australia last month.
The court blasted police as being “guilty of reprehensible conduct” and said they were “involved in sanctioning atrocious breaches of the sworn duty of every police officer.”
“The prosecution of each convicted person was corrupted in a manner which debased fundamental premises of the criminal justice system,” the court added in a scathing judgement.
The lawyer — given the code name 3838 by police when she was working as an informant from 2005 to 2009 — kept in daily contact with her handlers, who passed on information provided by her to various police taskforces, court documents stated.
While the courts only mentioned Mokbel and his associates, more than 600 cases could be tainted, Melbourne’s Herald Sun said.
Mokbel was jailed in 2012 for a minimum of 22 years for masterminding a drug trafficking empire.
The High Court’s decision means criminals would be notified that their barrister, who still cannot be named, was a police informant, thus possibly affecting their cases. It would mean these criminals could then appeal their convictions.
Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd said she has written to 20 individuals about their cases, and was assessing others.
“If appropriate, I will also write to those affected individuals,” she said in a statement.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews has announced a royal commission into the scandal, saying the public had a “right to know that every part of the justice system acts fairly and lawfully at all times.”
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said the force changed how it managed informants in 2009, so such incidents cannot be repeated today.
Ashton said while police would cooperate with the probe, what was happening in the underworld at that time should be taken into account.
“Melbourne was in the grip of what is now rightly known as the gangland wars,” he told reporters. “The risk to the community at this time was significant.”
Legal advocacy group The Human Rights Law Centre said an independent investigative body should also be established to probe all allegations of police misconduct.
“This case touches the highest levels of Victoria Police. While this is an extreme case it’s not an isolated example of police misconduct,” Ruth Barson, the center’s Director of Legal Advocacy, said in a statement.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS