The 2007 OPI Inquiry and the murder of Shane Chartres Abbott (Flushing dye through the pipes)

William Chartres-Abbott, the father of Shane (left), was a hard-drinking but youthful-looking man who, in the 1960s and early 1970s, operated an introduction agency next to a pool hall in Roma Street, Brisbane. 

In July 2003, Age reporter Padraic Murphy wrote that of his 10 children from three women, at least three were dead, from either drug abuse, disease or murder. Two were in jail, two living on the streets, and another working at a Melbourne brothel. Two of his children, half-siblings to Shane, have told The Age tales of sexual and physical abuse.

Police sources confirmed to the Age that the eldest daughter, then 44 and living in Melbourne's outer west, complained to police in 1997 about abuse she endured as a child. 

The complaint was referred to Queensland Police, but no charges had been laid.

A brother, Ashley Chartres-Abbott, 40, was in failing health and lives in an abandoned car in bush near Bendigo.

He claimed in early July 2003 that his father's introduction agency was little more than a thinly veiled brothel, and that he and his siblings were regularly abused by both male and female customers.

In 1974, William Chartres-Abbott left his second wife for Nancy Bowen.

She was a client of the agency, and they moved to Nimbin in northern NSW. 

Shane Chartres-Abbott was born in Brisbane in 1975, the second youngest of his father's children.

His parents split when Shane was seven and, with his younger sister Jo-Anne, he spent the next decade or so drifting back and forth between his mother's Gold Coast home and his father's various homes around northern NSW.

After marrying in the mid-1990s, Shane Chartres-Abbott moved to Melbourne with his wife and their son. 

Police in northern NSW had warned them over prostitution offences, and they spent the first few months living with Shane's half-sister in Melbourne's outer west.

His wife began working at the Top of the Town brothel off King Street and then at another brothel in Coburg.

In 2000, Shane Chartres-Abbott was arrested after fraudulently collecting money on behalf of the Salvation Army, and later that year broke up with his wife.

"(But) he saw how much money his wife was making and thought 'I can do that'," said Ashley Chartres-Abbott, who worked as Shane's driver for a while.

After splitting from his wife, he moved to Reservoir with his new girlfriend Kathleen Price, who later told the County Court that she was a trainee nurse.

In mid-2000, after a few false starts as a street walker trying to earn "pocket money", he began working mainly for the Male to Male escort agency based in Balwyn. 

To his neighbours Shane Chartres-Abbott was a clean-cut young man who kept unusual hours, but known as "Simon", he charged up to $300 an hour or $2000 for a night. About a third of this fee went to the agency.

He soon gained a reputation in the business, but his seedy life now seemed almost predestined by his fractured past.

His life was disconnected from what most people would regard as normality. Now it might taint other lives previously thought safe, secure and ordinary.

A court would later hear that Chartres-Abbott claimed to be a vampire, older than the city of Melbourne, who drank blood to survive.

Chartres-Abbott was said to specialise in rough sex, and carried a black work bag containing a variety of sex toys, including a whip and restraints.

The Age learnt he worked for about two years with Cloud Nine Escorts in Balwyn, a company that employs about 30 male and female prostitutes.

Colleagues said Chartres-Abbott was a valued staff member who serviced about 12 clients a week.

"He was just a person who loved new experiences. He loved his work. This shouldn't happen to anybody," said one colleague.

Stephen Linnell was described by Age crime writer John Silvester as always being more interested in political intrigue than cops and robbers and his decision to abandon daily journalism in 2003 for the highly paid police media director's job came as a surprise.

He was a cloak-and-dagger rather than a blood-and-guts man.

He had been a successful football writer with The Age, cultivating highly placed sources within the AFL and those relationships were mutually beneficial. 

Linnell had plenty of scoops and his sources' points of view were always well represented.

He was eventually appointed news editor. 

He was popular, hard working, irreverent and always up to date with the latest office politics.

Certainly during the selection process for the police job, one senior officer was warned that Linnell was a "wild card" who lacked the experience for the job and could be manipulated.

Before he left The Age he was warned to be wary of cut-throat police politics because it could be career-ending and to try to temper his locker-room language because it could be used against him. He chose to ignore the advice.

Former media director Bruce Tobin offered to provide a background briefing on the job and the key players in the force. 

Linnell declined, preferring to wander into the minefield without a map.

In June 2003, Chatres Abbott stood trial County Court over the brutal rape and bashing of one of his clients, a 30-year-old Thai woman, in a St Kilda Motel.

It was alleged he caused severe injuries to the victim, raping her vaginally and anally, and biting off a five-centimetre-long piece of her tongue.

Chartres-Abbott denied the rape allegations, claiming he was the victim and that the woman had been setting him up to die on camera in a so-called "snuff movie".

As the case progressed, Chartres-Abbott became concerned for his safety.

His lawyer, Alan Hands, said his client feared for his life and asked that Chartres-Abbott's identity be suppressed - an application that was rejected the previous week.

Five days later, Judge Bill White ordered Chartres-Abbott's address to be deleted from material handed to the jury.

Shane Chartres-Abbott, 29, was shot dead outside his Howard Street, Reservoir home on June 4, 2003.

The slender, almost baby-faced 28-year-old in a conservative suit, had just walked out of his home with his girlfriend, who was six-months pregnant, and her father on his way to court. 

Police say Chartres-Abbott was ambushed by two men as he left home with his girlfriend and her father.

In what is described as a professional hit, the men assaulted the older man and then shot Chartres-Abbott once in the neck. They fled on foot, running down a lane beside Chartres-Abbott's house and then north through a car park on Bedford Street.

Despite a large police search involving dozens of officers, the dog squad and a police helicopter, no trace of the two gunmen was found.

"Obviously they were laying in wait for him and the shooting has resulted," said Detective Senior Sergeant Clive Rust of the homicide squad. "It does surprise me. Obviously it appears to be a planned attack and, yes, quite vicious."

The men are described as thin to medium build. One was wearing a beanie and a scarf and the other man had a jumper pulled over his face.

The murder made sensational headlines.

It is the first time in recent memory that a defendant has been killed during a trial which grew more sensational as it progressed.

For homicide investigators, that professional style hit was the start of a strange and disturbing journey - from unassuming suburbia to a violent underworld of anonymous sex and sado-masochism.

The murder scene

"It appears somebody did find out his address and there appears to have been fairly dramatic consequences as a result," Judge White said as he told the shocked jury of the death.

The eight men and four women had sat for four days.

They were silent as Judge White offered them counselling. 

Before discharging them, he said: "It has been a difficult trial for all parties, including for myself."

Some believe his killing was ordered by crime figures to avenge the rape of one of his clients.

But others have formed the view that Chartres-Abbott, who got to know the sexual peccadilloes of hundreds of people - men and women - across Melbourne, secrets that threatened to become public

Those secrets may have cost him his life.

Homicide inquiries into Chartres Abbott's sordid lifestyle threatened to expose the secrets of his many clients and associates, wrote Padraic Murphy in his story in the Age.

Although police had interviewed dozens of people involved in his rape trial, detectives were struggling to develop significant leads. 

Hampered by the reluctance of those in the sex industry to co-operate, Murphy believed they were forced to turn their attention to Chartres-Abbott's clients - many of whom were married men.

Detective Senior Sergeant Clive Rust of the homicide squad said police might be forced to widen their inquiries.

"Certainly there are a lot of people who may have known (Chartres-Abbott) who might be reluctant to come forward . . . we know there are a lot of reasons why people may not want it to be known that they knew the victim."

Any information would be treated with strict confidence and sensitivity, Senior Sergeant Rust said.

"At the moment we are just doing a lot of leg work."

Meanwhile, Stephen Linnell had forged a strong relationship with Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon and under a police restructuring became responsible for a staff of 101.

He became Media and Corporate Communications Director and controlled not only dealings with the media but publications such as Police Life and the police website. 

Behind the scenes, Linnell wanted to be a kingmaker. He became increasingly distant from the working media and appeared to have embraced a role as a political numbers man.

Linnell also started to champion his "best friend and mentor", Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby, as a future chief commissioner.

Linnell and Ashby gossiped regularly, plotted privately, talked footy and bagged colleagues, sometimes light-heartedly and at other times viciously.

Ashby, consumed with ambition, saw his colleague Simon Overland as his main rival and believed Nixon was giving the former federal policeman the inside running for the top job.

When Nixon appointed Overland and Kieran Walshe to become the two deputy commissioners he felt snubbed and rejected. This further fed his burning jealousy and he rarely resisted a chance to privately decry Overland as naive and inflexible.

Overland had become the public face of the Purana gangland taskforce and, while he didn't court publicity, his media profile grew with each murder and, later, with each arrest.

Overland worked out of the St Kilda Road crime complex, while the media director's office was in the Victoria Police Centre in Flinders Street, well away from the real action. Linnell felt snubbed and complained that he was being kept out of the loop.

Ironically, when he was brought into the inner sanctum and given explosive confidential information, it would destroy his career.

On September 14, 2007, Age reporter Nick McKenzie wrote that a senior Victorian detective was under investigation over his alleged ties to a contract killing carried out by a notorious underworld hitman at the height of the gangland war.

The hitman told a secret police taskforce that Detective Sergeant Peter "Stash" Lalor (right) gave him the address of his target (Chartres-Abbott), an investigation by The Age found.

The hitman has also alleged that Detective Sergeant Lalor, in an attempt to confuse homicide officers, arrested him for unrelated crimes on the afternoon of the murder.

The Age confirmed that Detective Sergeant Lalor arrested the hitman for driving offences at Prahran police station eight hours after the killing.

The taskforce, codenamed Briar, was also investigating colourful former St Kilda detective Dave "Docket" Waters (left), who the hitman claims was aware of the murder plan. The hitman claims that he, Waters and Lalor met at a Carlton hotel a few weeks before Chartres-Abbott was killed.

Waters was a drinking partner of the hitman, now in jail for unrelated gangland killings.

The allegations were set to reopen the debate about links between police and organised crime, and whether the state now has the right system in place to investigate corruption.

In a major concession, Victoria Police for the first time acknowledged the existence of alleged links between corruption and underworld murders.

"I am happy to concede there is now evidence allegedly linking police corruption and organised crime killings. But we have found it and we are following it," Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland told The Age.

At the height of the Melbourne gangland killings between 2003 and 2005, police and the State Government publicly dismissed such links and resisted calls for a royal commission to investigate them.

Mr Overland told The Age that Victoria Police and the Office of Police Integrity were on top of corruption, and defended force command's previous denial of links between the underworld and police. He said to confirm such links would have been irresponsible. "We have to work on hard evidence," he said.

The secret taskforce investigating Detective Sergeant Lalor and Mr Waters is one of two taskforces now probing connections between serving and former police and underworld killings.

The other, Taskforce Petra, is investigating the murder of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife in Kew in 2004.

Hodson was killed after agreeing to give evidence against police accused of drug trafficking. Taskforce Petra's suspects, who include a former detective, are unrelated to the Briar investigation.

Detective Sergeant Lalor is a prominent police union delegate who has campaigned against the state's powerful police watchdog, the Office of Police Integrity (OPI), which was created by the Government in late 2004. Taskforce Briar is a joint police-OPI operation.

Detective Sergeant Lalor has publicly railed against corruption reform. Late in 2006, he urged all union delegates to support the Police Association's call to shut down the Office of Police Integrity, labelling it "the office of public idiocy".

Detective Sergeant Lalor and Waters were both stationed at the St Kilda police station in the 1990s.

Detective Sergeant Lalor was suspended from the police force the week that the story went to print. He could not be contacted by the Age.

In a brief statement, OPI assistant director Graham Ashton said the two taskforces into corruption were "precisely why the OPI was set up".

On Sunday, September 30, Assistant Commissioner Ashby met Police Association boss Det Sgt Paul Mullett in a shopping centre and handed him an application to rejoin the association five years after he had quit — a clear sign he was looking to the powerful union to assist him with upcoming legal liabilities.

It would appear that Ashby had begun to lower the lifeboat, but there would only be room for one on board.

On November 7, 2007, it was reported that Chief Commissioner Nixon had asked two of her most senior staff to take leave while they were being investigated by the Office of Police Integrity.

She stood down Ashby (left) and Steve Linnell.

Both men had been summonsed to appear before an OPI public hearing which was examining the leaking of confidential information relating to the murder of Chartres-Abbott.

Ms Nixon said Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell both still had her full confidence.

"I have, in consultation with both individuals, asked them to just take leave while they concentrate on these hearings and others have been put in their positions," she said.

The Office of Police Integrity hearing was told unauthorised information was passed on about the case through police for private purposes.

Counsel assisting the OPI, Dr Greg Lyon, SC, said the purpose of the leaking was to defeat the effectiveness of Operation Briars, which he said was a murder investigation that also examined police links to the murder.

Dr Lyon said the end result of the leaking was that some critical operation information passed into the hands of the target of the murder investigation.

"These were not inadvertent acts," Dr Lyon said.

"The use of the term leaks is inappropriate, for it suggests an inadvertence, a slip or innocence about what occurred.

"There was no inadvertence here. Highly confidential information was deliberately sought and deliberately given".

One of those summonsed to give evidence at the inquiry, which was expected to last several days, was Paul Mullett.

Linnell's day, which began on a bad note when Murray Wilcox, QC, OPI delegate, ruled against his bid to close proceedings to the public, took a nastier turn in the afternoon.

Unsmiling, Linnell was walked through a series of at first bland questions from OPI counsel Dr Greg Lyon, SC.

Was he aware of the Public Service Code of Conduct's emphasis on preserving privacy and confidentiality? Did he appreciate what is meant by "need-to-know basis"?

Linnell responded that he took those obligations very seriously, and also that it was part of his job to advise the Chief Commissioner on "what to say, what not to say".

Then Linnell was led into the subject of Operation Briars, the secret taskforce to investigate an informant's assertion that police were involved in Chartres-Abbott's murder.

Linnell recounted the small knot of senior police who knew of the probe and the people within his unit who were also privy to its details.

And repeatedly he was asked if he stood by previous assertions he had not shared confidential information with anyone who had no right to know.

"Absolutely," he responded, when Lyon read out his earlier testimony: "I don't leak!"

At day's end, told he would be testifying again the following morning, Linnell stood silent in an emptying chamber where you could almost hear his lawyer's unanswered question still bouncing off the walls.

"Is Mr Linnell a target rather than a witness?"

It was reported that explosive new evidence at the inquiry implicated senior officers and embarrassed others involved.

Phone taps had uncovered serious tensions at the highest levels of the force, with Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland described by Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby as "that prick" and by Victoria Police media man Stephen Linnell as "that cunt Overland".

According to secret tapes and written evidence released during the afternoon, some of Victoria's most senior police were part of a chain of secrecy breaches that led to the Chartres-Abbott murder suspect getting a tip-off that he was a police target.

In dramatic developments, Ashby admitted reading confidential information about the shooting.

And a series of other highly-ranked police were linked to a potentially explosive chain of secrecy breaches.

Stephen Linnell, had come under fire for showing Ashby the confidential terms of reference of Operation Briars.

On November 8, 2007, Ashby testified that Linnell allowed him to read the Operation Briars document on his computer screen.

Rather than his customary brass-bedecked uniform, the lifer who joined the force as a 16-year-old was wearing a neat but nondescript blue business suit.

A consequence, perhaps, of having been placed on leave at the order of Chief Commissioner Nixon.

And then there were the lawyers, whose bulk and briefcases squeezed him into the lift's rear left corner, partially shielding the man whose job it has been since 2005 to keep a lid on Victoria's road toll.

But then you noticed the cornered man's expression.

It was just a little wide-eyed, surprisingly anxious, for a veteran copper whose career-building stints as a homicide and car-smash investigator must have exposed him to some fearful sights.

As every fresh body piled into the tin box, Ashby's gaze appeared to take them in, the eyes darting from face to feet like the beads on a private abacus that was calculating what part each fresh arrival might play in the all-day ordeal that awaited him.

On Wednesday it had been Ashby's friend, Linnell, looking uncomfortable in the witness box, but today it was Ashby's turn, and the recordings of their bugged phone conversations were the chief instruments of the assistant commissioner's torment.

Potential charges against Ashby include conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, perjury, unlawful release of confidential information and breaches of the Telecommunications Interceptions Act. 

All carry jail terms.

Over the months that the super-secret taskforce investigated how a professional hitman found the Reservoir address of Chartres-Abbott, all leads suggested the trail began inside the force.

The case laid out by OPI counsel Dr Greg Lyon, SC, traced those taskforce leaks to Linnell, who allegedly told Ashby, who was accused of passing the information in turn to Paul Mullett.

From there, according to Lyon, it went to the association's president, Brian Rix, and finally to union delegate Peter Lalor who also happened to be the detective whom the hitman, now behind bars, named as his informant.

In prior, private sessions with OPI investigators, Ashby denied any knowledge of the probe.

He stuck to the same line as a sometimes sarcastic Lyon attacked his credibility again and again, often with a theatrical incredulity.

At first, before the tapes of bugged telephone conversations were played, Ashby was almost combative, explaining as if to a child that his job involved handling pay negotiations with the association - a thankless chore that meant handling the "paranoid" Mullett with kid gloves.

As the day wore on and the tapes were heard, many punctuated by obscenities and bitchy gossip about fellow senior cops, the morning's self-assurance started to wither.

A visibly shocked Mr Ashby was confronted repeatedly with bugged conversations that contradicted evidence he gave under oath at a private hearing in October, and earlier in the day.

Rather than the earlier, pat response that he knew nothing and had whispered less, Ashby began to stammer and grope for words as Lyon's methodical assault gathered momentum.

Retired Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox leant forward and spoke calmly to the witness. 

"I'm doing this out of a sense of fairness to you," he said. "I have an impression of this conversation … I think I ought to tell you what it is."

It was 12.15pm, in the stifling heat of the so-called "star chamber" of the OPI, a cramped windowless courtroom in a Collins Street office block.

Ashby was entering the third hour of intense questioning by counsel for the OPI, and the grilling was intense.

Flushed, he turned to the bench.

The presiding Mr Wilcox, a special delegate under the OPI's powers of investigation, was reflecting on a taped conversation between Ashby and the head of the Victoria Police media unit

One taped conversation between Ashby and Linnell, in August Mr Linnell tells Mr Ashby: "Ring me urgently."

Mr Linnell later tells Mr Ashby to "just be careful" in telephone conversations with the Police Association secretary Paul Mullett.

Ashby: "Why? Is he being recorded?"

Linnell: "Um, I can't say."

Ashby: "He might be?"

Linnell: "I can't say. Talk to you later."

Ashby: "F---! … I did talk to (Mullett) yesterday."

Mr Wilcox looked at the witness. Stop beating around the bush might have been a translation of his brow. The tone of the calls, he told Ashby, were "urgent and quite definite … it's personal, it's serious".

"You immediately understand (Linnell's) warning that Mullett's phone is tapped … and you really have to be careful on the phone to Mullett. Why would Steve Linnell be concerned and why would you be concerned?"

This was at the crux of six hours of tense, and sometimes tetchy, testimony given by Ashby, in a case shrouded by intrigue, and one that has lifted the lid on internal police alliances, ambitions and petty jealousies, as much as it has on a high-stakes corruption investigation.

Ashby maintained that the focus of his concern was an indiscretion regarding a planned trip to Fontainebleau in France by deputy commissioner Simon Overland. 

He'd told Mullett about it, and he hadn't wanted it to appear on radio's "rumour file". It wouldn't have looked good, he explained.

At the time Ashby was in the thick of negotiations with Mullett over a new enterprise bargaining agreement.

Ashby likened negotiations to "dealing with a criminal informer". 

Handling Mullett was about cajoling, about currying favour and sometimes about lying to him in a bid to get the political job done.

The tapes confirmed that Linnell and Ashby were mates, and that Ashby and Mullett were matey. And they revealed a hard-edged animosity towards Mr Overland.

But was it more than an indiscretion? 

Had Mr Ashby thrown more to Mullett than a few morsels to keep wage talks on track? Had he also passed on the names of two police officers (including a union delegate) under investigation in the highly-sensitive Operation Briars? The names had been revealed to him by Linnell, displayed on a computer screen.

In the slow-burn questioning, Dr Greg Lyon, SC, sought to skewer Ashby over contradictory evidence he had given in the private October OPI hearing, invited him to listen to damning and highly embarrassing conversations on tape and challenged him on why meetings with Mullett were rarely recorded in his diary.

There had been a chain of leaks, contested Dr Lyon, "part of the information super highway? You passed it on." Sensitive information went from Mr Overland to Linnell, to Ashby, then to Mullett.

Dr Lyon pressed. The day after Ashby had a conversation with Mullett, the Police Association's president Brian Rix and the prime target of Operation Briars had spoken on three occasions.

Dr Lyon: "And Rix said to the target he needed to see him urgently outside the Police Association about something that couldn't be discussed on the phone. So I am putting it to you, Mr Ashby, that the information has gone from deputy commissioner to director of media, to an assistant commissioner, to the Police Association secretary, to association president and into the hands of the very target of the operation."

But the hardest moment for the cop whose golden path led him from cadet to assistant commissioner must have come when a tape caught him discussing his career strategy with Linnell.

He hadn't wanted the drug squad or armed robbery, he explained, because it seemed a better move to punch his ticket in homicide.

By late afternoon, the officer who never put a foot wrong on his upward path was looking grey, haggard, weary and thoroughly worn-out.

It had only been a short ride in that lift to the first-floor hearing room, but the expression he wore said that he was all too aware that it was a long, long way down.

He is believed to be the most senior Australian police officer ever to have his phone tapped.

On November 9, 2007, Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby quit the force.

This came after three days of damning evidence implicated him in leaking sensitive information to the powerful police union, who allegedly tipped off the suspect.

On November 12, 2007, shattered police media director Stephen Linnell (right) admitted lying to the OPI and then resigned his position.

Linnell told the hearing on two prior occasions he had not told the truth about leaking highly-confidential information to Ashby.

Linnell agreed that he passed on the information about Operation Briars.

Counsel assisting the hearing Dr Lyon took Linnell to a number of secretly tapped conversations between him and Mr Ashby.

Linnell admitted passing on information about Operation Briar, discussing targets for the operation and potential legal defences.

"It's cost me my job and everything else," Linnell said.

He also admitted that he told lies at a private hearing of the OPI on September 25 this year.

Dr Lyon said that the evening before the hearing, he spoke to Ashby and the conversation was secretly recorded.

In the tape Ashby says: "They don't have Mullett". A reference to the Police Union Chief's phone being bugged.

Dr Lyon said to Linnell that he told the private OPI hearing that he couldn't recall speaking to anyone about Mullett's phone being ''off'.

"That's right, yes," Linnell said.

Dr Lyon suggested that Linnell had deliberately lied about discussing Mullett's phone.

"I have to deal with this," Linnell replied.

Dr Lyon said that in relation to the private OPI hearing Linnell understood that he was bound by confidentiality requirements and Linnell agreed.

"Do you agree that you did not comply with your obligation under the summons," Dr Lyon asked.

"Yes I do," Linnell replied.

Dr Lyon put it to him that on the same day as the hearing at 5.29pm he made a phone call to Ashby from a neighbours house and talked to the Assistant Commissioner about the hearing.

The inquiry was played a tape of that conversation in which Linnell reveals: "This is about us".

He also tells Ashby: "They're heading down a path of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice."

At one point Ashby says: "We just play a straight bat here."

"Within a relative short time of being given the warning (speaking about the hearing) you were discussing it in great detail with Ashby," Dr Lyon asked.

Linnell: "Yes."

"You realise it was important," Dr Lyon asked.

Linnell: "Yes, yes". 

Before the inquiry started lawyer Mr Martin Grinberg announced that Linnell had resigned from his job.

Mr Grinberg asked director Murray Wilcox to excuse Linnell from giving any further evidence as he was no longer a public servant.

Mr Grinberg said that the tapes were in the public domain and any further questioning of Linnell would simply be putting him through further public humiliation.

He also said that Linnell had to be protected against the potential for self incrimination.

Mr Wilcox said that the tapes played last week on the conversations required further explanation from Linnell.

"It is important for the story to be told," Mr Wilcox said.

"I don't want his agony to be prolonged."

Linnell was recalled to give evidence and throughout the morning he appeared nervous and upset.

He continually drank from a plastic cup, sighed deeply and looked defeated as he spoke about his conversations with Ashby.

Dr Lyon asked him about one tapped conversation where the policeman being targeted by Briars were discussed with Ashby.

Ashby said: "I wouldn't know those pricks if they walked through the door now".

Linnell said he wasn't concerned about the names of the officers concerned but simply if they could be connected in anyway to Ashby.

Referring to Ashby's ambitions to become Chief Commissioner, Linnell told the inquiry: "Clearly we were looking at the future".

Dr Lyon said that on September 17, 2007, Deputy Commissioner Overland made a controlled release of information to Linnell as part of the OPI investigation.

Dr Lyon said Mr Overland told Mr Linnell that the OPI was going to conduct an inquiry in two weeks to the media.

Less than 11 seconds later Linnell phoned Ashby to pass on this information about the OPI.

Dr Lyon said: "They were flushing dye through the pipes."

"I should not have passed that information on," Linnell said.

Meanwhile, senior public servants have been linked to the police corruption hearing amid claims a minister's chief of staff leaked information to disgraced former top cop Noel Ashby.

On November 12, 2007, Ashby claimed Sen-Sgt Mullett is about to drop explosive material, which will devastate Victoria Police - and possibly the State Government.

He allegedly will do so during the Office of Police Integrity's corruption hearing.

In another bugged conversation, Ashby claimed Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland had got something over Victoria's top public servant.

He alleged that was why Department of Premier and Cabinet boss Terry Moran was backing Mr Overland to replace Christine Nixon as chief commissioner.

Ashby was taped telling Mullett about Mr Overland's alleged links to the powerful Mr Moran, who is on a $450,000-a-year salary.

Ashby was secretly bugged bragging about his close relationship with Labor political heavyweight Colin Radford, and claimed Mr Radford was one of his sources.

Mr Radford is a close confidant of Premier John Brumby and is chief of staff to Finance Minister Tim Holding.

Ashby claimed Mr Radford leaked sensitive information to him.

He alleged Mr Radford told him in September Mr Brumby had major changes planned if he won the next election.

"Twinkle Twinkle becomes the, er, Treasurer," Ashby said in a taped conversation with now suspended Victoria Police media director Steve Linnell.

Twinkle Twinkle, as in little star, is Mr Holding's nickname.

Mr Radford worked very closely with Mr Brumby when the latter was Opposition leader in the 1990s and had remained part of the Premier's inner circle.

Ashby also alleged Mr Radford told him he was on a promise from the Brumby Government that a controversial appointee to a plum job was going to be moved aside so he (Radford) could take the position.

Evidence suggests Ashby was referring to Police Minister Bob Cameron's chief of staff, Brett Curran, being removed and replaced with Colin Radford. 

Insp Curran was Ms Nixon's acting chief of staff until he accepted his current job with Mr Cameron in September.

Sen-Sgt Mullett and Ashby tried to stop Insp Curran being appointed as Mr Cameron's chief of staff, with Ashby claiming Mullett was ringing people in government about it and had direct access to Mr Brumby's office.

Mr Ashby feared Insp Curran would use his new position to lobby for Mr Overland or Assistant Commissioner Ken Lay to replace Ms Nixon as chief commissioner - a role Mr Ashby wanted for himself.

In another bugged conversation, Mr Ashby alleged to Sen-Sgt Mullett that it was Mr Radford who confirmed to him, before it was announced, that Insp Curran was going to made chief of staff to the Police Minister.

Mr Ashby appeared to brag to Sen-Sgt Mullett that he had an informer in Mr Brumby's office who previously worked for former police minister Andre Haermeyer.

In a bugged conversation with Sen-Sgt Mullett on September 19, Mr Ashby claimed that Labor MP Martin Foley had played a major role in getting Insp Curran the job with Mr Cameron.

"He's (Foley) persuaded that someone who was informer . . . said he's a good operator and that's what eventually got him (Insp Curran) across the line," Mr Ashby said.

The corruption inquiry that ended the career of Noel Ashby is not the first time he has come under scrutiny over confidential Victoria Police data.

The former assistant commissioner was criticised three years before after he helped lead an internal investigation into officers inappropriately checking the file of a victims' rights campaigner.

Mr Ashby and another officer came under fire from then acting Ombudsman, Robert Seamer, after Mr Seamer examined their investigation into why five officers viewed the file of Kay Nesbit.

Mr Seamer said the internal police investigation into the checking of Ms Nesbit's files on the police Law Enforcement Assistance Program failed to adequately verify statements of officers who looked at Ms Nesbit's file.

"It seems the process was not perceived to warrant any in-depth investigation," Mr Seamer said in a report.

"In my opinion, this response reflects what has been an inappropriate attitude by some police that the personal information contained in LEAP is common property, which is accessible by all members for any reason on a whim."

Mr Seamer said the internal investigation had led to Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon being given wrong information.

On November 12, 2007, Inspector Glenn Weir, who was in charge of the police media unit, was stood down with pay after giving evidence at the inquiry.

Inspector Weir is accused of helping Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell evade phone taps by passing on a supposedly safe number for Mr Ashby to call Mr Linnell on.

Inspector Weir was also caught in phone taps discussing Mr Linnell's summons to appear before the inquiry - an offence which carries a maximum 12-month jail term.

The OPI flexed its muscle when Inspector Weir smirked while a recording of him joking with Mr Linnell about possible phone taps was aired.

Counsel assisting the inquiry Greg Lyon SC challenged Inspector Weir's dismissive attitude to questioning.

"You are lying, you are trying to distance yourself from your involvement in it now that you've seen what's happened," Dr Lyon said.

Inquiry head Murray Wilcox, a retired federal court judge, questioned Inspector Weir's judgment.

"You would know, as an experienced police officer with 25-26 years' experience who has risen to the rank of Inspector, that phone intercepts require a warrant, and to get a warrant you need reasonable grounds for suspicion that a criminal act has occurred," Mr Wilcox said.

"I would have thought you would have stayed a million miles away from any action that circumvented the effects of the phone intercepts."

When asked outside the hearing whether he intended to hold on to his position, Inspector Weir replied: "Absolutely."

Mr Ashby and Mr Linnell may still face criminal charges including:

Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice

■Maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Ashby has admitted he might have inadvertently "blabbed out" the name of Operation Briars target Sergeant Peter Lalor to Police Association secretary Paul Mullett after Linnell improperly showed him details of the investigation on his computer screen.

Disclosing an OPI hearing

■Maximum sentence of one year in prison. Linnell has admitted he gave Ashby details of a secret OPI hearing relating to Operation Briars on September 25, minutes after he testified there.

Communicating telephone interception warrant information to another person

■Maximum sentence of two years in prison. Linnell told Ashby that Mullett's phone was being tapped. Ashby told former assistant commissioner Leigh Gassner in June that Mullett's phone was no longer being tapped.

Perjury

■Maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Ashby and Linnell have admitted their answers at the public OPI hearing contradicted their answers at the earlier, secret inquiry.

On November 13, 2007, Premier John Brumby said his media director, Sharon McCrohan, did not pass on information to him that the Office of Police Integrity was conducting secret hearings.

The previous week the hearing revealed evidence that Stephen Linnell told Ms McCrohan in late September that he had been called to appear before the then secret inquiry.

In a taped telephone conversation played to the hearing, it was revealed that Mr Linnell told Ms McCrohan at a football match that he had been called to the OPI hearing.

Mr Brumby said the OPI hearing was essentially about police corruption, comparing some of the evidence to background gossip.

"I'm not going to stand here every day and give you a running commentary on every claim or background bit of gossip or chatter that is made by people on the phone," he said.

Mr Brumby said he was informed verbally in the week before the public OPI hearings by the secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Terry Moran, that they were going to be held, and described that conversation as "entirely appropriate".

In turn, it was Victorian Ombudsman and head of the OPI, George Brouwer, who informed Mr Moran of the public hearings, the Premier said.

"She (Ms McCrohan) talks to lots of people and she certainly didn't pass on any of that information (from Mr Linnell) to me and I wouldn't expect her to," Mr Brumby said.

The OPI can call anyone to give evidence, providing it is relevant to their investigations.

Mr Brumby is opposed to an independent corruption commission.

He said the OPI is effectively a standing commission against police corruption.

"In terms of police integrity, in terms of police corruption what the OPI is doing is obviously discovering those small areas of the police force where there is an issue and they're actively decisively on that," he said.

Christine Nixon came in for criticism from former chief commissioner Kel Glare, who blamed her for developing an undisciplined culture inside the force.

Mr Glare has blamed a lack of respect in part for the behaviour of Victoria Police members in the Office of Police Integrity hearing.

"There obviously is a total lack of respect for the chief and that's sad," Mr Glare told Channel 7 last night.

"You don't have senior officers acting in the way they allegedly have without there being a total lack of respect."

He claimed the development of this culture in the force was a direct result of Ms Nixon's management style.

"There's no dodging that," he said. "Having held the position (myself), the buck stops at the top.

"No question.

"The ultimate responsibility is with the chief commissioner and I believe the approach of allowing everyone to use first names, including -- as I understand it -- the chief being called by first name, has led to a breakdown, it seems to me, in discipline."

But the former police chief stopped short of damning the future of the current force.

"If it is to recover, I believe there has to be a new culture of discipline," Mr Glare said.

On November 14, 2007, police union chief Paul Mullett arrived at the inquiry to be greeted by poste of the words "dead fish".

The words - A4-sized photocopied sheets of what appear to be news headlines - were plastered over a post outside the OPI hearing rooms.

The steely-eyed Senior Sergeant appeared not to notice the prank as he strode wordlessly through a large media pack into what many expected to be a fiery session.

He told the Office of Police Integrity he wanted to change some answers he gave the OPI at a private hearing the previous month.

Senior Sergeant Mullett told the inquiry that since the private hearing "I have refreshed my memory".

He admitted to speaking to Noel Ashby about his appearance at the private OPI hearing after telling the hearing he had not.

It is illegal to discuss the private hearings of the OPI with anyone.

He also admitted meeting Detective Peter Lalor at the union's headquarters after telling the private hearing he had not.

He now says he asked Mr Ashby to make inquiries as to who was on a police taskforce related to a secret investigation.

It is alleged Sen-Sgt Mullett was a link in a chain of senior police figures which ended with Det Lalor being tipped off that he was being investigated.

Mr Mullett endured five hours of OPI grilling, but emerged without suffering the fatal career blow that many were expecting.

While Mr Mullett opened proceedings by admitting he could now recall answers to six questions that he had failed to answer at a private hearing of the OPI last month, he stood firm under subsequent examination.  

At one point, Mr Mullett answered ''I can't recall'' to five successive questions regarding police leaks and phone intercepts.

And he said today he couldn't recall being told the terms of reference or the targets of an investigation into police corruption.

Counsel assisting the OPI inquiry, Dr Greg Lyon SC, asked if former Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby passed on the information about Operation Briars - an investigation into the involvement of police in the hitman murder of Shane Chartres-Abbott

Dr Lyon suggested former police media director Steve Linnell passed on the information to Mr Ashby who passed it on to him (Mr Mullett) who passed it on to association president Brian Rix, who passed it on to Peter Lalor.

"Did Mr Ashby tell you he had read the terms of reference?" Dr Lyon asked.

"I can't recall," Mr Mullett replied. "It would be a hard thing to forget," Dr Lyon said. Mr Mullett said he was being asked to recall conversations three months ago.

"This is really big. This is a murder investigation with police links," Dr Lyon said. "One of your delegates is a target."

"I can't recall it," Mr Mullett.

Mr Mullett agreed he passed on information to Mr Rix that Mr Lalor's phone might be tapped.

But he said he believed they were being tapped in relation to a separate investigation into a series of anonymous e-mails that had circulated during battles for control of the association. 

Mr Mullett told the inquiry he had a meeting with Assistant Police Commissioner Luke Cornelius, who is in charge of ethical standards, on May 24 and asked if he was under overt and covert surveillance and if his phone calls being intercepted.

He agreed that in the conversation he raised the question if it was in relation to the "Kit Walker matter".

The hearing was told today that Kit Walker was the code-name given to Peter Lalor who was under suspicion of leaking the address of Shane Chartres-Abbott to the hitman. Kit Walker was also the name of a police member involved in harassment of another police member.

Counsel assisting the inquiry, Dr Greg Lyon, said Mr Cornelius took notes of the meeting and he said Mr Mullett had claimed he got the information on survelliance from a "reliable source".'

"I can't remember, it may have been", Mr Mullett said.

The inquiry has been played a number of tapes where Mr Mullett discusses surveillance with now resigned Assistant Commissioner