Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan is about to complete a report into allegations that a former north Belfast UVF commander was involved in more than a dozen murders while he acted as an informer for the RUC Special Branch.
Former senior RUC officer Johnston Brown has claimed to this newspaper that elements within RUC Special Branch protected this UVF figure to ensure he was not exposed as an informant, despite the fact that they knew he was associated with several killings of Protestants and Catholics.
It is perverse what happened, and goes against everything a police officer is sworn to do," Mr Brown said yesterday.
The Irish Timeshas also obtained a confidential report compiled by the respected London-based human rights group British Irish Rights Watch (BIRW) which lists nine of the people whom the UVF man is alleged to have murdered either through direct involvement or indirectly by ordering or being linked to these killings.
Raymond McCord, whose son Raymond jnr was allegedly murdered on the orders of this UVF figure in 1997, has also told The Irish Timesthat security and loyalist paramilitary sources have corroborated to him the claims made by Mr Brown, who as a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer was responsible for putting UDA leader Johnny Adair in prison for directing terrorism.
Mr McCord snr raised his concerns about the investigation into his son's death when he met Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Dublin recently.
Sources say the Ombudsman's report, which will be completed in the summer, will be more controversial and far-reaching than her report into how the RUC handled the inquiry into the Real IRA bombing of Omagh. That exposed huge failings in the RUC inquiry and had major security and political implications.