Australia’s regulators have had a torrid few months — hot on the heals of ASIC’s defeat in the One.Tel and Fortescue matters comes the stunning defeat of the Victorian Office of Police Integrity in its prosecution of former high-ranking Victorian police officer Noel Ashby.

Yesterday, State Prosecutor Chris Ryan told the Victorian Supreme Court that it would not submit evidence against Ashby in relation to 11 perjury charges. The decision came days after Justice Robert Osborn, of the Victorian Supreme Court, ruled that the OPI hearings were not lawful because the presiding judge, Murray Wilcox, had been sworn in one day too late. (As a result, evidence obtained during those hearings would not have been admissible against Ashby at trial).

The finding of “not guilty” does not mean that Ashby is innocent of perjury (nor does it necessarily mean that he guilty either). Simply that the evidence collected during the OPI’s hearings was deemed invalid due to a legal technicality. The ruling does not change the unproven fact that Ashby was caught lying during recorded telephone conversations. Or that former Police media director Stephen Linnell was preparing to testify against Ashby. (Andrew Rule noted in The Age this morning that Linnell now finds himself in the somewhat unusual position of being “guilty” of a non-offence.)

The exoneration of Ashby in fact bears a remarkable resemblance to infamous National Crime Authority prosecution of John Elliott and several other executives of Elders IXL (which was once Australia’s second largest company by sales, only to almost collapse in 1990 after losing $1.5 billion) in the mid-1990s. Elliott and co were charged with fraud by the NCA in relation to a controversial foreign exchange deal with New Zealand entrepreneur Allan Hawkins (Hawkins was jailed over the incident). Elders executives were also accused of profiting from a secret convertible-bonds deal and using the funds to invest in a leveraged buy-out of Elders (the buy-out vehicle, Harlin Holdings, itself would collapse).

Former Elders finance chief Ken Jarrett had earlier pleaded guilty and spent six months in jail for his role in the incident. Like Linnell, as part of his plea bargain, Jarrett agreed to provide statements and was set to testify against Elliott (and his co-accused, including BRW rich list member Peter Scanlon) for their role in the fraud. Jarrett’s testimony and the mountains of evidence against the Elders bosses were never tested in court.

Again like Ashby, Elliott was found not guilty based on a legal technicality (which was later deemed to be a grave legal mistake by the Court of Appeal) when Justice Frank Vincent deemed that the NCA had exceeded the limits of the matter referred to it. Vincent (erroneously) held that all statements made and evidence gathered by the NCA was inadmissible due to the NCA’s coercive powers being illegally used. In an almost identical final result to the Ashby matter — it was found that evidenced obtained was effectively “poisonous fruit”.

The NCA was accused of acting in a manner resembling a “star chamber”, including denying those questioned the ability to publicly speak about the interrogation — 20 years later, almost identical claims were leveled at the Office of Police Integrity.

While the alleged errors of the NCA in the Elliott case were later found to have been perfectly legal, it appears that authorities failed to learn from the defeat and the importance of procedure in high-profile prosecutions. Expensive defence lawyers will use anything they can to achieve an acquittal for their client. Foolish errors such as the one committed by the OPI are an almighty disservice to taxpayers, who spent millions of dollars to ensure that justice was served.