Gerard Ryle

Gerard Ryle is an Australian investigative reporter who is internationally recognised for work on subjects including politics, financial and medical scandals and police corruption. He emigrated from his native Ireland in 1988 and has worked for the Fairfax newspapers The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2008-2009, he exposed the international fraudster Tim Johnston who had deceived the governments of Australia, Britain, Russia and other countries over the Firepower Pill.^[1]

In September 2011, he was appointed Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., USA.^[2]

In April 2013, ICIJ published a financial leak comprising tens of thousands of offshore bank accounts, in which many prominent international figures were implicated, including the ex-wife of Marc Rich, Azerbaijan's ruling family, the daughter of Imelda Marcos, and the late Baron Elie de Rothschild.^[3] The leak was the largest ever, at more than 160 times the size in gigabytes of the Wikileaks Cablegate in 2010. "To analyze the documents, ICIJ collaborated with reporters from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world.^[4] The 15-month investigation began when Ryle brought ICIJ a hard drive that he received by mail from an anonymous informant.

References

• What does it take to create one of the country's most spectacular frauds? (Audio) Interview with Gerard Ryle, Australian ABC Radio National, 30 April 2009

Bibliography

• Ryle, Gerard Firepower: The most spectacular fraud in Australian history Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2009. ISBN 978-1-74175-355-4