Within two months of being released from Portlaoise Prison in late 1993, John Gilligan was flying by Aer Lingus "Gold Circle" from Dublin to Amsterdam, Paul Williams points out in this courageously frank and very detailed book on the gangster's rise to millionaire status and the murder of Veronica Guerin.
The details of the flight were passed to the Garda. Then Dutch police discovered Gilligan's contacts with a major drug trafficker in Amsterdam and sent notice to the Garda. In September 1994, after the Garda seized £46,000 in cash in a car driven by one of Gilligan's associates, Gilligan was able to go before Dublin District Court and get the money back. He repeated this feat three months later - again to the knowledge of the Garda - when £76,000 was seized by British customs at Holyhead on a lorry going to Holland.
During this time Gilligan was buying land around Mucklon, outside Enfield, and building what he intended to be the biggest equitation centre in the State, eventually spending some £1.7 million in the process. He also laundered £5.4 million through bookmakers. In one day alone he bet £53,400.
He made a total of 40 trips via Aer Lingus "Gold Circle" to Amsterdam. The Dutch police again sent details to the Garda of one of Gilligan's associates changing £1.6 million into Dutch guilders in 1994. An offer from the Dutch authorities of a closed circuit TV tape of Gilligan attempting to launder money in a casino was ignored. Under Dutch privacy laws the tape was later destroyed.
And, this was a man, as Williams points out, who was already very well known to the Garda as a violent armed robber who, when sent a self-assessment tax form, scrawled the words 'fuck off' on it and returned it to the Revenue Commissioners.
The information which Williams lays out about Gilligan's rise in the drugs trade reveals the terrible failings in the policing and criminal justice system in this State prior to the murder of Guerin.
If John Gilligan had walked around with a sign proclaiming: "I am a major drug dealer and gangster" things could not be more obvious. Yet, nothing was being done. Crime reporters were even writing about Gilligan. Veronica Guerin decided to do what the authorities were not doing and went and knocked on Gilligan's door. For her troubles she was viciously assaulted.
She pressed charges. Two weeks before Gilligan was due to appear at Kilcock Court on charges of assaulting her, Veronica was shot dead.
Within a few months of her murder - in the face of seething public resentment - the State enacted the Proceeds of Crime Act and legislation setting up the Criminal Assets Bureau. This raft of law - it should be known as Veronica's Law - should ensure there will be no more John Gilligans here. It is being emulated by the British Government and studied in many other countries which face problems of organised crime.
The gardai were not the only ones to blame for the state of the criminal justice system that preceded Veronica's death. There was institutional apathy in the State's response to organised crime prior to her death. During his earlier career as a robber Gilligan was repeatedly able to avoid conviction by intimidating witnesses and was continually given bail when caught offending.
It would have been illegal for the Garda to arrest him and search his premises even on the clearest suspicion that he was a drug trafficker. The gardai could find themselves before the courts if they did.
Paul Williams, the Sunday World's crime correspondent and author of two other books on Dublin criminals, unfolds the sad story of the State's failure to respond to organised criminals with forensic clarity. He paints, in previously unpublished detail, a picture of the gang responsible for Veronica Guerin's death. He has clearly devoted a great deal of effort and time to researching the gang's background; most of them left school at 12 or 13 to begin a life of crime in the slums of Dublin. He was helped by serving and retired gardai who had struggled against the tide of crime in the city. The book is a tribute to their work and, particularly, the dedication of the officers led by Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey who finally hunted down Gilligan and his gang and put them behind bars. This is the best book on Irish organised crime to date and a tribute to a murdered colleague.
Jim Cusack is Security Editor of The Irish Times.