Senior Australian police officials hoped Cardinal Pell investigation could distract from major police scandal
6062 Mins Read
Senior police officials in the Australian state of Victoria discussed by email the way that their 2014 investigation into Cardinal George Pell could deflect public scrutiny from an emerging corruption scandal in the force.
In a 2014 email exchange, then-Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton and Charlie Morton, assistant director of media and corporate communications for the Victoria police department, discussed how to respond to a high-profile scandal which would hamper the credibility of Victoria police operations.
In an email dated April 1, 2014, Morton advised Ashton not to make a media appearance in response to the “Lawyer X” scandal, because forthcoming announcements about Cardinal Pell could distract media and public attention.
“The Pell stuff is coming tomorrow and will knock this way off the front page,” Morton wrote to Ashton.
“Unless there are some serious appeals from convicted [criminals] which might get up as a result of this, then I can’t see this continuing with the same level of profile.”
The emails emerged this week as Ashton, now Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, gave evidence at a Royal Commission inquiry into the use of police sources and the Lawyer X scandal, in which criminal defense lawyer Nicola Gobbo was recruited to work as an informant against members of the Calabrian mafia, while she was representing several of them as an attorney.
Gobbo has claimed that her work as an informant for Victoria police from 1995-2009, despite issues of professional ethics and client confidentiality, led to 386 convictions, many of which are now believed to be tainted, subject to appeal, and could be overturned.
The email exchange between Ashton and Morton came after a news radio host in Melbourne referred on air to the about-to-break story as one of the “biggest law and order scandals in [Victoria state] history” and predicting it could result in “killers walking free.”
