International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Paul Williams, Ireland, is the chief crime correspondent for Dublin's Sunday World newspaper.

Paul Williams, Ireland

Williams became a subject of media attention himself following the murder of his colleague and chief competitor, Sunday Independent reporter Veronica Guerin. Both reporters had to work under 24-hour security paid for by their newspapers due to the numerous death threats their work provoked. Guerin was gunned down by mobsters in her car in June 1996 after years of investigating Ireland’s criminal networks. Williams was first on the scene of her death, and later reported that Guerin’s assassins were led by a crime boss named John Gilligan. Williams examined the circumstances surrounding Guerin’s death in his 1998 book Gangland, which exposed Ireland’s “new mafia” network. Williams is also the author of the 1995 book The General, about Irish crime boss Marin Cahill, who became the focus of an international police hunt following the theft of a multimillion-dollar art collection from an Irish mansion in 1986. Williams was awarded Ireland’s ESB National Media Award in 1995 for overall excellence and again in 1996 for “campaigning and social issues.”