Who will be ACT's next top cop? Federal cybercrime fighter warms the seat

Regarded within senior police circles as a "safe pair of hands", Assistant Commissioner Lee will sit in the role which will be vacated by Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan, who is retiring this month after nearly 40 years in uniform.

As the ACT is policed under a contract arrangement as an outcome of the Australian Federal Police, the Chief Police Officer must be a candidate recommended by federal police Commissioner Reece Kershaw and ratified by the ACT government, which pays $200 million a year for the service.

For years, the role of ACT Chief Police Officer had been an appointee from the ranks of the federal assistant commissioners, who are managers of national portfolios.

But this changed when Neil Gaughan was appointed in May 2020 and the federal police organisation structure was rejigged to make the ACT appointment from among the more senior Deputy Commissioner ranks.

There are only four sworn deputy commissioners, among them Lesa Gale, who served for many years as a crime investigator in the ACT and is now head of the international and specialist capabilities command. Commissioner Kershaw can recommend one of these four deputies, or choose to promote someone else.

Scott Lee joined the Australian Federal Police in 1985, his career providing him a broad range of experiences.

He has been responsible for criminal investigations and intelligence operations in combatting terrorism, organised crime, money laundering, organised fraud, human trafficking, child sex offences, people smuggling, counter terrorism and foreign interference.

One of his biggest early assignments was as a forward commander of Operation Alliance, the Australian contingent deployed to assist the massive investigation of the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 88 Australians died.

The horrific attacks were carried out by terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, a southeast Asian group linked to al-Qaeda.

Operation Alliance involved one of the AFP's most significant Disaster Victim Identification processes, returning victims to their families was well as assisting the Indonesian police terrorism investigation.

He has broad experience in working cooperatively with other police jurisdictions, working with Victoria police to establish the joint organised crime taskforce in 2013 to detect and disrupt crime across Australia's waterfronts.

He also ran Operation Neath, a multi-jurisdictional investigation that disrupted an armed terrorist attack on the Holsworthy military barracks outside Sydney in 2019.

He was promoted to Assistant Commissioner in November 2014.

Assistant Commissioner Scott Lee has led the federal cybercrime division since March last year, where he had taken up the key enforcement role in the federal government's new $1.67 billion cyber security strategy stretching out to 2030.

During the COVID pandemic, cybercrime became one of the fastest growing and most prolific forms of crime in the country, triggering the establishment of the joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Centre (JPC3) based out of the Australian Federal Police headquarters in Sydney.

The centre, which is also inter-connected with the highly secretive Australian Signals Directorate, received $89 million in set-up funding to begin its work against crimes committed via the dark web, and to investigate and prosecute all forms of cybercrime, including ransomware.

Operation Guardian, which was set up in September 2022 just before 10,000 Optus customers had their personal information unlawfully released online after the Optus data breach, was extended to include Medibank Private, MyDeal, Latitude, and GoAnywhere customers who suffered the same breach, was one of the first major investigations of the new centre.

Last year a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that over 65 per cent of Australians have been victims of cybercrime.