Gangland lawyer turned police informant says she has been forced to live overseas due to fear for her and her children’s safety

Gangland lawyer turned police informer Nicola Gobbo says she has been “snookered by Victoria police”, forced to live in an undisclosed overseas location because she fears for her and her children’s lives.

Gobbo’s longest registration as police informer “Lawyer X” was from 2005 until 2009, when she turned on some of her most high-profile clients, including drug trafficker Tony Mokbel and underworld murderer Carl Williams. In July, Gobbo’s former client Faruk Orman was released from jail after a 12-year sentence when his criminal conviction was overturned, with Gobbo’s informing found to have led to a substantial miscarriage of justice.

Speaking to the ABC’s 7.30 program – her first interview since Victoria announced a royal commission into police informants – Gobbo said she discovered from media reports that Victoria police first registered her as an informer in 1995. They did so without her knowledge, she said.

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“I don’t know who I was informing on when I was cooking chips at the MCG and studying full-time,” Gobbo said.

“I mean I look back, I think from what I’ve learned now, I think they probably groomed me from day one.”

The police informant royal commission had been previously told by chief commissioner Graham Ashton that he was notified in April 2006 of Gobbo’s informing. At the time, Ashton was heading an independent police watchdog that wanted to call her as a witness in an investigation into the suspected involvement of a former policeman, Paul Dale, in the murders of Terence and Christine Hodson. He told the commission he did not know about her earlier registration as an informant until the royal commission.

Ashton will conclude his evidence on Wednesday.

Gobbo told 7.30 she could not return to Australia because she had been told her two young children would be removed from her due to risks to their safety. Earlier in December, the royal commission ordered Gobbo give evidence over the phone. A failure to comply carries a two-year jail sentence. Gobbo’s lawyers had argued she was mentally unfit to give evidence.

“I have been snookered by Victoria police, um banished from Australia, with the ultimate threat you can give to any parent the two most precious things um in my world are my children,” Gobbo said. She added that to produce a witness statement for the commission, she would need at least “a thousand hours” to compile all of her information as well as review some 30,000 pages of commission material.

This would be made difficult due to the extreme pain she still experienced after suffering a stroke in 2004, she said.

“It’s very frustrating from my point of view for the perception to be that I am a liar and I’m trying to avoid giving evidence,” Gobbo said.

Asked if she was concerned about being charged for allegedly altering witness statements and interfering with witnesses, she said that everything she did was at the behest and control of Victoria police.

“So, if I’m to be charged, then um I suppose we’ll be in the dock together.”

Gobbo said the homicide squad had pressured and manipulated her. Over the years, her fear of retribution from her former gangland clients if they discovered her informer status was replaced by a fear of the police, she said.

“Knowing what I know now about their tactics and about obviously what happened as time went on … I got played,” she said.

“My overwhelming guilt is for what my children have had to endure. My overwhelming guilt and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it, is that something I did … has had the impact on them.”