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Gilligan launches mole hunt to unmask who told reporters where he was living

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Gilligan launches mole hunt to unmask who told reporters where he was living

Veteran criminal John Gilligan has launched a desperate mole hunt to try to unmask who told the Irish Mirror where he was living.

“He is like a bull,” a source told us last night – a day after the aged crime boss was confronted at his new hideaway in Spain. We challenged Gilligan (72) outside his small house near the town of Torrevieja on the Costa Brava on Sunday – and sources say he has been apoplectic with rage ever since. “Gilligan is furious,” a source said. “He went all around people who know him in Torrevieja demanding to know if they told the paper where he was.




“He is desperate to find out who it was. Lots of people knew where he was, so it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack and he is hardly a top investigator, in fairness.” Gilligan – charged but acquitted of the infamous murder of crime reporter Veronica Guerin in south west Dublin in June 1996 but caged for 17 years for importing cannabis – was not at his home near Torrevieja yesterday. He lives on a busy residential street in a development outside the town that is popular with tourists and expats – including people from Ireland.

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The mobster – seen here in new Irish Mirror pictures taken yesterday – previously lived in a stunning €800,000 villa with its own pool and large veranda – but sources say the west Dublin criminal has now fallen on hard times. He is now living in a small detached house that has no pool and appears to have only two bedrooms. Sources have told us Gilligan – who earned millions of euro in the 1990s when he flooded Dublin with cannabis – is now down on his luck. “He had money for the last few years, but that has mostly gone,” one source told us. “He is not the flash man that he was in the past. I don’t know if he is poor, but he is not loaded.”

We wanted to speak to Gilligan after underworld sources in both Ireland and Spain said there were serious rumours the criminal was suffering from an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Gilligan refused to talk to us when we confronted him as he put out the rubbish at his home on Sunday – but a key associate later contacted us to insist he was healthy.

“John says hello,” the go between said. “He is healthy.” When pressed if Gilligan had cancer, the associate insisted: “No.” However, sources insisted the rumours about his health were still doing the rounds in Ireland and Spain. These photographs of Gilligan are the first since he avoided a jail sentence in Spain in September last year.

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