Louise Carruthers: Ex-Corruption and Crime Commission officer admits intimate relationship with informant

A former senior Corruption and Crime Commission officer will formally admit having an intimate relationship with an informant over five years, a court has been told. Louise Catherine Carruthers’ lawyer Jesse Cox told Perth Magistrates Court chief magistrate Steven Heath on Monday that his client would plead guilty to the single count against her. The facts were not read out in court and the matter was adjourned until September 4, with Mr Cox saying he still needed “to finalise some issues” in discussions with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. When WA Police laid the charge of public officer acts corruptly in performance of their functions in April, they said Ms Carruthers had the “inappropriate” relationship with a “registered human source” who was a prisoner at the time. They went on to say she had “engaged in deceitful conduct” to hide the relationship from her employer so the pair could continue “clandestine meetings”. It allegedly included creating a pseudonym to register herself with the prison as a legal contact for the inmate so they could “secure extended unmonitored and unrecorded” relations. Ms Carruthers was at the centre of a bombshell report entitled “Going Rogue” that was tabled in State Parliament in March last year. The Parliamentary Inspector of the CCC, Matthew Zilko, formed an opinion of serious misconduct against the 42-year-old, saying she had an extensive and intimate relationship with a “human source”. Mr Zilko wrote that she was a long-term CCC employee and was acting as a “human source handler” when she engaged in the conduct, describing it as “extremely serious”, “potentially dangerous” and involving “a gross breach of trust”. “The officer deceived the commission, exposed others to potential harm by revealing official information obtained through her work, and neglected to responsibly perform her job,” Mr Zilko wrote in his report. “The public has the right to expect the highest standards from officers in powerful positions.” Ms Carruthers, who was referred to only as “LC” in the parliamentary report and no longer works for the CCC, unsuccessfully sought to have her identity suppressed when she fronted Perth Magistrates Court in May. She declined to speak with media outside court on Monday. While the parliamentary report stated that the relationship ran from early 2020 and early 2023, court lists suggest the alleged offending spanned a longer period, from November 2018 to January 2023.