Lawyer X, Law Firm X and Elon Musk's X: scandals linked by Old Xaverian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Jul 1, 2025
Just when you thought it was safe to go to court, think again. Your lawyer might not have your best interests at heart and even worse, they may be working for the other side.
In 2014, journalists discovered Victoria Police had a secret informer, a mole snitching on the underworld, identified by the code name Lawyer X.
Initially, police were so concerned they sought a restraining order to prevent the media from publishing anything about the scandal. Police even sought to have the code name Lawyer X suppressed from publication.
It was beyond embarrassing: not only did police have the burden of protecting their secret informer, they may also have to protect her relatives who share the same name. The most notable among them, the informer's uncle, James Gobbo, a supreme court judge who subsequently served as Governor for the State of Victoria.
There is absolutely no suggestion that Lawyer X's relatives had anything to do with her misdeeds. Nonetheless, the clients she betrayed were the biggest crooks in town, until, of course, her unethical behavior gave them the opportunity to have those convictions overturned and present themselves as model citizens once again. Any relatives or former business associates of Lawyer X, including the former governor, would be in danger for the rest of their lives.
James Gobbo and his son James Gobbo junior are both Old Xaverians, graduates of Melbourne's elite Jesuit school for boys, like my father and I.
Lawyer X was eventually revealed to be Nicola Gobbo, a graduate of the elite girls school Genazzano FCJ College. My aunt, that is my father's sister, also went to Genazzano.
Alumni communications typically refer to Old Xaverians with the symbols "OX" and the year of graduation, for example, "OX96" for somebody who graduated in 1996.
Whenever a scandal like this arises, if the suspect is a graduate of one of these elite schools, the newspapers will be very quick to dramatize the upper class background. The case of Lawyer X was a head and shoulders above any other scandal: a former prefect and class captain who made a career out of partying with drug lords, having their children and simultaneously bugging their conversations for the police.
Stories like this are inconvenient for those elite schools but in reality, I don't feel the schools are responsible when one of these unlucky outcomes arises. The majority of students are getting a head start in life but there is simply nothing that any school can do to prevent one or two alumni going off the rails like this.
Having been through this environment myself, I couldn't believe what I was seeing in 2023 when the Swiss financial regulator (FINMA) voluntarily published a few paragraphs from a secret judgment, using the code name "X" to refer to a whole law office (cabinet juridique in French) of jurists in Geneva who had ripped off their clients.
The Gobbo family, Genazzano FCJ College and alumni have finally been vindicated. The misdeeds of Lawyer X pale in comparison to the crimes of the Swiss law firm X.
Remember, Lawyer X operated in secrecy, her identity only known to a small number of handlers inside the police department. Thanks to my own research, I was able to prove that the activities of Law firm X were fully known to the bar association and the financial regulator for at least two years before they belatedly closed the firm.
Lawyer X claims she contributed evidence to the arrest of 386 suspects during her time as a police informer. Law firm X had over twenty thousand clients at the time they were shut down. They admit that client records fell into the hands of Walder Wyss, a rival law firm engaged in legal proceedings against some of the clients who were abandoned by the Swiss jurists.
Lawyer X was a woman and in her most recent bid for compensation, she claimed she was exploited by the police. Law firm X trafficked at least one woman from France to come and work in Geneva helping them promote an unauthorized insurance service to residents of both France and Switzerland.
Lawyer X was a former member of a political party. One of the jurists from Law firm X was working for the rogue law office at the same time that he was a member of Geneva city council. He is a member of the same political party as the Swiss president from that era.
In 1993, Lawyer X was an editor of Farrago, Australia's leading student newspaper. Law firm X used the Swiss media to write positive stories about their company. When the same company was outlawed, nanny-state laws prevented the media reporting anything at all about its downfall. Ironically, one of my former clients was also an editor of Farrago before he became Australia's Minister for Finance. The word Farrago gives a fascinating insight into the life of Lawyer X. Here is a sample sentence using the word Farrago in the Cambridge dictionary:
... told us a farrago of lies
When FINMA revealed the secret judgment shuttering Law Firm X, Urban Angehrn, the FINMA director, resigned citing health reasons. His dramatic resignation helped bury news stories about the Law firm X judgment. In Australia, a number of chief commissioners have resigned. In fact, Victoria Police have been through three leaders in the last year.
Who predicted Elon Musk would acquire Twitter?
In 2018, I attended the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, where I made this brief intervention predicting the future of Facebook and Twitter. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, he called it X. Go figure. █
