Sir Hugh Orde made two revelations at last week’s policing board meeting regarding police contracts with a Portadown building firm once owned by a prominent member of the UVF.

The first was that the contracts totalled almost £5 million between 1999 and 2004, rather than the £320,000 initially stated. The second was that the firm in question, the Jameson Group, failed PSNI security vetting twice before the NIO cleared it on appeal.

Sinn Fein MLA Martina Anderson, who raised the issue in connection with the murders of Portadown teenagers Andrew Robb and Paul McIlwaine, described police building contracts as “one of the ways in which unionist death squads were rewarded by the state for their role in collusion”.

As usual, Ms Anderson protests just a little too much. The McIlwaine family has only alleged the involvement of informers in the murder and informing is not colluding.

The PSNI is responsible for loyalist intelligence gathering and it is legally entitled to manage and reward informers. However, this matter goes far beyond the police.

In recent years the Jameson Group has secured contracts with the Court Service, the Prison Service and the Ministry of Defence, as well as various local authorities. These bodies also perform vetting procedures which the Jameson Group also presumably required NIO assistance to pass.

I am aware of one instance where RIR soldiers at a security briefing were shown photographs of a loyalist who was working, at that very moment, on the roof of the briefing room.

What we have here is not a PSNI system to reward informers but an NIO system to reward the cooperative.

The late Richard Jameson, former owner of the Jameson Group and the UVF ‘brigadier’ in mid-Ulster, was an early and open supporter of the peace process. Such was his support, in fact, that disgruntled members left to form the LVF, ultimately leading to the feud which cost Mr Jameson his life in January 2000 and Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine their lives a month later.

Semi-official systems to reward the cooperative undoubtedly exist. Industries which are otherwise heavily regulated appear mysteriously immune from regulation in the case of certain individuals. Even more mysteriously, these individuals can find themselves back under regulation if they cross accepted peace-process ‘red lines’ on crime or anti-agreement associations.

In private conversations about this with police officers I have been told to grow up and accept that the tens of thousands of people with paramilitary pasts are still with us in the present and must be coaxed into the future. But if the need for this is so obvious, must the coaxing be so totally unaccountable?

Northern Ireland has a commissi oner for everything except corruption. The Assets Recovery Agency can not investigate fraud by public-sector bodies and the Audit Office never touches anything even vaguely process-related. The media is blinded by “security” excuses at every turn.

The Jameson Group case was raised at the policing board by Sinn Fein but the rarity of this example only highlights how reluctant all our politicians are to trespass on the financial patch of each other’s tribal turf.

The result of this unaccountability is creeping corruption and commensurate public cynicism. The Jameson Group case has now drawn in so many agencies of the state that justice can not even be delivered for the psychotic butchering of two teenage boys, for fear of bringing down a whole official edifice of barely related appeasement.

Meanwhile, a fatal sense grows that Northern Ireland is becoming a quasi-Sicilian society. We feel the presence of a Cosy Nostra, if not quite yet a Cosa Nostra, with all the deep-seated damage that brings.

We can pride ourselves on being grown up about the price of peace. But where is the adult supervision of the cost of compromise?

For many years, small businesses in Portadown were asked to ‘donate’ to the UVF via its ‘ex-prisoners’ fund”. Those who refused were punished with armed robberies, for which nobody was punished at all. Now it transpires that they were making a donation anyway via their taxes – as was everybody else both then and, quite possibly, now.

A state this corrupt forfeits the authority to levy taxation. Perhaps that thought needs spread more widely before the NIO allows us an antidote to this poison.

A Co Armagh building company linked to an alleged UVF leader was paid more than £5 million by the PSNI, it can now be revealed.

In January 2000, alleged mid-Ulster UVF leader Richard Jameson was shot dead by the LVF near his home in Portadown.

The murder sparked a bitter loyalist feud that claimed the lives of Protestant teenagers David McIlwaine and Andrew Robb less than a month later.

Jameson’s building company had been awarded a series of contracts to work on police stations, prisons and British army bases.

Concern was also expressed over claims Jameson’s firm received the lucrative contracts despite twice failing police vetting procedures.

In September 2007, Paul McIlwaine’s family was informed by Deputy Chief Constable Paul Leighton that the building company had been paid £320,000 for work on police stations.

However, the force has now admitted that the information it provided to the dead man’s family was “inaccurate” and the actual figure is £5 million.

When Mr Leighton first wrote to the McIlwaine family, he said there was no information held by the PSNI that would “by or in itself” preclude Jameson’s company from being awarded contracts.

He said police may continue to use the company if it successfully tenders for future contracts.

“Our vetting of civilians is undertaken within a framework agreed with the Northern Ireland Office,” Mr Leighton said.

“An identical process is followed in each case irrespective of the individual concern.”

However, Mr McIlwaine’s father has now demanded a meeting with Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde over claims that Jameson had twice failed PSNI vetting.

It is thought a third vetting process also resulted in rejection but was overturned on appeal by the Northern Ireland Office.

“The PSNI claimed this company was only paid £320,000 but when I challenged them they finally admitted that the true figure was £5 million,” Mr McIlwaine said.

“I am asking the chief constable to explain to me how a man who was regarded as a leading member of an illegal paramilitary organisation was allowed to work in some of the most highly sensitive police stations in the world.

“I want to know why he twice failed police vetting but then mysteriously had the ban lifted by the Northern Ireland Office.

“Why was the government paying millions of pounds to someone who it suspected to be a leading member of a paramilitary organisation?”

The matter is to be raised by Sinn Fein at a meeting of the Policing Board today.

A LOYALIST ‘supergrass’ has been described in court as a “high profile and active terrorist’’ in the
ruthless Mid-Ulster UVF brigade.

And fatboy slim Mark Burcombe has been linked by a PSNI Criminal Investigation Department intelligence file to ONE murder and TWO attempted murders.
The Sunday World can reveal the the 27-year-old UVF terrorist was arrested in connection with other loyalist paramilitary activity in the Mid-Ulster area. Yet despite knowing about Burcombe’s “active’’ involvement with the banned terror group, the Public Prosecution Service and the PSNI agreed to allow Burcombe to enter the ‘supergrass’ system in return for giving evidence against his co-accused Steven Revels.

Details of Burombe’s involvement in the banned terror group have been revealed in court by lawyers acting for Revels. His defence team are currently locked in a legal battle with the PPS over the disclosure of intelligence material relating to Burcombe who is in a witness protection scheme. He has agreed to give evidence against Revels in return for pleading guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit GBH to
Andrew Robb.

Burcombe made a deal with the PPS under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 to turn ‘supergrass’ against Revels.

As a result, Burcombe was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison but with time served on remand he
is now a free man living under the assumed identity of ‘Scott Adams’ in England.
Discovery
Under the deal, Burcombe was to wipe the slate clean about his involvement in all crimes. However, lawyers for Revels said Burcombe has been linked by police intelligence to one murder and two attempted murders.
This includes:

* the murder of Catholic man Robert Hamill in 1997. Burcombe had been arrested and quizzed three times over the killing;

* the attempted murder of ex-UVF inmate Ephraim ‘Effy’ Kerr in 2000 at his Granville Road home in Portadown;

* the attempted murder of Ryan Greenaway in the Killycomain estate in Portadown.

Lawyers also said Burcombe was linked by police intelligence to other UVF activities in the Mid-Ulster
area. He was quizzed by police over the discovery of guns found in a yard owned by Richard Jameson, the then UVF’s brigadier in Mid- Ulster. It was Jameson who took Burcombe and several others involved in the Hamill murder to the UVF’s Shankill Road headquarters in 1997 to be “initiated’’ into the terror group.
Burcombe was also linked by police intelligence to the baseball attack inside Portadown FC’s Shamrock
Park social club in December in 1999 following tensions with the rival LVF.
Lawyers for Revels told Belfast Crown Court that on the night of the murders of Andrew Robb and David
McIlwaine, Burcombe had been seen in the company of Philip ‘Philly’ Lunt and Wayne ‘Squinty’ Lunt who
were known to police as “members’’ of the UVF in Mid-Ulster.
The Sunday World has learned that Burcombe lived in a house with the Lunt brothers in Lisburn,
Co. Antrim.

However, when Burcombe handed himself in to police in 2005, the Lunt brothers travelled to Amsterdam and lived there for a period of time.

The court heard the brothers were among 12 people along with another man identified in court as
‘Shilly’ who were named on a target list but their names had now been redacted. Revels’ lawyer are seeking
access to all relevant intelligence material held by PSNI Special Branch, British Military Intelligence and MI5 on Burcombe’s involvement with the UVF revealed. They argued that the intelligence could affect
the credibility of his evidence at Revels’ trial for the double murders on November 10.
Paul McIlwaine, the campaigning father of murder David McIlwaine, told the Sunday World that he found himself a reluctant supporter of the defence applications. “I can see where the Revels defence team are coming from. These intelligence reports will either prove or disprove Burcombe’s credibility as a
witness.”
Involvement
“If the security forces didn’t have intelligence on him as a UVF member, then they wouldn’t be arresting him for UVF activities in the first place?
“As far as I know, he has made no reference to his involvement to UVF activities in Mid-Ulster in his ‘supergrass’ statement.
“So he hasn’t come clean about his involvement with the UVF, about his involvement in a murder, two
attempted murders, and other UVF activity.
“When this case goes to trial, Revels defence will discredit Burcombe’s testimony and we will end up
with no one convicted of David and Andrew’s murders.
“We don’t believe Burcombe has told the truth. The police don’t believe he has told the truth so why
are the PPS prepared to go ahead with this deal? It is a disgrace.
“When he applied for bail in November 2005, the Crown told the High Court that police believed Burcombe
to be a member of the UVF yet he has never been charged with being a member of the UVF.’’
The High Court bail application was denied by the then Mr Justice Girvan who said Burcombe had “made no attempt to report what was an appalling crime.’’ He added: “The degree of violence at the scene and the fact that this appears to have been part of an internecine war between loyalist paramilitaries…points to a propensity to violence of an extreme nature.’’