Former chief of police Simon Overland says Lawyer X and Mokbel was 'messy'
Former police boss Simon Overland has admitted he should have known snitching gangland lawyer Nicola Gobbo was informing on her clients.
The ex-Victoria Police chief commissioner assumed investigators who reported to him were following his instructions to order Ms Gobbo not to represent those she snitched on, but has confessed he was responsible for checking.
He was an assistant and deputy commissioner during Ms Gobbo's informing years and had oversight of the force's crime department, including the gangland-busting Purana Taskforce.
Nicola Gobbo. (Angelia Wylie / The Age)
Mr Overland told the inquiry on Tuesday the Purana investigators were all "highly experienced" and he "assumed" they would be dealing with issues around Ms Gobbo's snitching on those she had represented.
But counsel assisting Chris Winneke QC pressed him on whether assumptions were enough.
"Do you accept as the person ultimately responsible, if you didn't know you should have known," he asked.
"Yes," Mr Overland replied.
Ms Gobbo snitched on multiple clients, including a drug cook whose arrest she helped orchestrate before turning up at the police station to defend him.
Former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland arrives to the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants at the Fair Work Commission in Melbourne, Monday, December 16, 2019. (AAP)
Mr Overland denied he was trying to have it both ways by having her snitch on her high-profile drug kingpin client Tony Mokbel.
He says it is "coincidental" police began an operation to bring down Mokbel just weeks after recruiting her as an informer in September 2005.
"The intention, as I understood it, was not to go directly at Mokbel at that time but to work around him and take out those around him and build a case against him that way," he said.
He revealed on Monday the case was centred around Mokbel's drug operations, but to also force Mokbel into a position to turn into an informer in underworld murder cases.
"Yes, it was messy. Absolutely it was," Mr Overland admitted.
He said he made it clear to investigators Ms Gobbo was not to continue representing Mokbel while informing on his crew.
Nicola Gobbo says she's too unwell to give evidence at a royal commission. (9News)
But that position was challenged in a tense exchange with Mr Winneke, who said Ms Gobbo had overtly continued to act for Mokbel.
"It beggars belief, Mr Overland, that you could have been giving your investigators those clear and direct instructions and all of this was then permitted to happen throughout early 2006," he said.
"It is unbelievable, I suggest to you."
But Mr Overland rejected that.
"Well, no, that's what happened," he said.
Mr Overland later denied knowing Ms Gobbo was still representing Mokbel when he fled to Greece in 2006.
He denied Mr Winneke's claim that the denial was "fanciful".
"It's not fanciful. I was not following who was representing whom given the large number of people who were under investigation at that time," he said.
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