Bail for trafficker linked to informer
A CONVICTED drug trafficker jailed on the word of one of Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo’s clients has been granted bail.
Zlate Cvetanovski becomes eligible for parole in August, but asked the Supreme Court to free him yesterday after already serving nearly a decade behind bars.
He was granted bail on a $400,000 surety provided by his former wife and will be released from Loddon Prison.
Cvetanovski is appealing criminal convictions he argues were tainted by Lawyer X’s supergrass past as a police informer.
He was jailed after Ms Gobbo (pictured) convinced a drug cook client – who she had informed on – to give evidence against him.
Justice David Beach said Cvetanovski raised “very serious issues” about the fairness of his trial because he and his defence lawyers weren’t told of that association, which only became public last year.
He said it was now common ground that Ms Gobbo provided legal advice and other support to that witness while also acting as an informer, and that Cvetanovski asserts she also gave him legal advice.
Whether he was ever one of her clients is disputed.
Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd QC has accepted that failing to disclose Ms Gobbo’s involvement was “improper” but that it made no difference to the outcome of his trial.
However, prosecutors conceded in Victoria’s Court of Appeal
last week that the evidence of that witness was vital to their case against Cvetanovski. His lawyer Julie Condon QC went further, saying it was pivotal.
“The case quite clearly stood or fell on the word of (that person) and that underscores the significance of the lack of disclosure,” she said in his bail application last week.
Justice Beach said Cvetanovski’s appeal grounds were “reasonably arguable” and should he remain in prison there was a “real risk of injustice”.
Cvetanovski would have been eligible for parole in August after serving nine-and-ahalf years behind bars.
But Justice Beach said there was no chance his appeal, launched in September 2017, would be heard by then, primarily because of delays in him receiving relevant documents.
A number of other appeals are also under way, including those of drug kingpin Tony Mokbel, and “tomato tin” ecstasy importers Rob Karam and Jan Visser.