Victoria's former police chief commissioner, Simon Overland, considered terminating the use of gangland lawyer Nicola Gobbo as an informer in 2006, three years before the arrangement ended, the Lawyer X royal commission has heard.
On May 17, 2006, while he was assistant commissioner, Mr Overland attended a meeting with two members of the Source Development Unit — the group of officers who handled day-to-day contact with Ms Gobbo.
Notes from the meeting read out at the Lawyer X royal commission show the trio discussed giving her a reward for her help in a matter and considered a process to terminate her role as a police source.
They also discussed providing Ms Gobbo with psychological counselling.
One of the handlers, giving evidence under the pseudonym Sandy White, said in the weeks prior to the meeting with Mr Overland, Ms Gobbo had helped police make a series of arrests that disrupted Tony Mokbel's drug cartel.
Against the wishes of her handlers, Ms Gobbo was proposing to represent members of the cartel as they prepared to face court.
Mr White told the royal commission he had contemplated arresting Ms Gobbo to stop her doing so.
Counsel assisting Chris Winneke QC put it to Mr White that given Ms Gobbo's conduct, it would have been an appropriate time to wind up the relationship with the informer.
"I can't recall my view at the time but after the arrest of Milad [Mokbel] it would have been a consideration," Mr White said.
The commission also heard evidence police handlers may have undermined the criminal justice system by passing privileged information about one of Ms Gobbo's clients to investigators.
It was told Ms Gobbo warned her handlers the brief of evidence in a deception case against Zaharoula Mokbel was deficient and that she suggested improvements.
Mr White agreed that sort of information was legally privileged.
"I can't explain it to you," he said.
"It doesn't seem appropriate that it was passed on."
