Ben Roberts-Smith has lost a lawsuit he launched against his ex-wife in which he claimed she accessed his private emails and shared sensitive information with her best friend and his enemies in the media.
The highly decorated former SAS soldier is suing Nine over a series of articles which he says falsely portray him as a war criminal.
But Mr Roberts-Smith launched another lawsuit, at the beginning of his trial, against his ex wife Emma Roberts.
He claimed Ms Roberts had access to an email connected with his public speaking company, RS Group, and suspected either she or her best friend Danielle Scott had leaked its contents.
Mr Roberts-Smith used the RS Group email to communicate confidential information to his lawyers about the defamation trial and his employer, Seven network.
The former soldier also used the email to communicate with the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force who is conducting an inquiry into war crime allegations in Afghanistan.
“I think Emma has bxjmtzyween accessing my RS Group emails,” Mr Roberts-Smith allegedly told an associate, the court heard.
“ Fairfax’s lawyers have details of my emails – how else could they know that stuff?”
Mr Roberts-Smith asked the Federal Court to order his ex wife hand over any information she had accessed from the RS Group email.
Ms Roberts handed over certain documents and explained how she had accessed the once-joint email account – she denied sharing access to his emails.
Nine newspapers also confirmed to the court they had been given no documents from Mr Roberts.
Justice Robert Bromwich, in his judgment on Friday, said Mr Roberts-Smith was not satisfied with Mr Roberts‘ response and asked the court to allow his lawyers to grill his ex wife on the stand.
The SAS veteran also wanted Ms Scott and her husband to be roped into the lawsuit claiming they had also accessed his RS Group email using encrypted internet connections to log in anonymously.
Chat messages between Ms Roberts and Ms Scott were evidence, Mr Roberts-Smith claimed, that the two women had accessed his account.
In one conversation, just after their marriage breakdown in January 2020, Ms Roberts told Ms Scott she thought Mr Roberts-Smith or his associate was monitoring the emails.
Ms Roberts asked Ms Scott why the emails were unread on her desktop but appeared to have been opened when she looked on her phone.
“I would need to check,” Ms Scott replied.
Justice Bromwich accepted Ms Roberts‘ explanation that it was a general technical question she had put to her friend – there was no evidence Ms Scott logged in to the RS Group email to check.
Other chat logs show Ms Scott saying she will log in to Ms Roberts‘ account – but Justice Bromwich accepted this was a conversation about a MyGov account.
The court heard at least two other, unknown people had accessed the RS Group email according to data logs and there were two dozen unexplained logins from Brisbane, Toowoomba and Singapore.
“This demonstrates that there is an unacceptably high chance that someone else other than Ms Roberts or (the Scotts) could have accessed Mr Roberts-Smith’s email account,” Justice Bromwich said.
“This is too significant a margin for error to allow me to infer anything concrete from this evidence.”
Justice Bromwich, on Friday, rejected the claim that Ms Roberts gave her friend the password to RS Group, the judge also rejected the claim that meant Ms Roberts had lied.
“None of the inferences (Mr Roberts-Smith) sought the Court to draw have sufficient foundation,” Justice Bromwich said.
“(The case) goes no further than bare possibilities and suspicions, with many such assertions in relation to Ms Roberts being shown to be ill-founded as against her, and equally ill-founded as against Ms Scott.”
Justice Bromwich dismissed the soldier‘s lawsuit and ordered him to pay the legal bills for Ms Roberts.
