Madeleine investigation to continue for another year

Paul Rees 06 June 2019

Scotland Yard has been granted a further £300,000 to fund Madeline McCann detectives’ costs for another year.

A Home Office spokesman commented, "All applications for Special Grant funding are considered carefully on their individual merits, however, decisions are made in batches to allow us to better consider the impact on the overall policing budget.

"Due to this, the next round of Special Grant funding will not be decided until October, however we have written to Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime in the meantime with assurance that the Metropolitan Police Service will receive a similar level of funding for Operation Grange for 2019/20 as it did for the previous year."

The Met wanted the additional money, in a case that already has cost UK taxpayers over £11 million, to continue to work on what it describes as 'outstanding leads.'

The extra funding for Operation Grange should allow a further year’s work to be carried out.

Madeleine was nearly four when she disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May, 2007.

An initial Portuguese investigation led to no result and Scotland Yard launched an investigation in 2011 with the same effect, despite throwing detectives and resources at the mystery.

There now are just a few officers working on the case and, despite looking at more than 60 ‘persons of interest’ and making inquiries as to the whereabouts of 650 sex offenders, the result has been a massive and embarrassing ‘zero.’

Comments

+3 #16 AL 2019-06-12 13:36

Quoting JamesAlgarve:

You are simply relying on conjecture and hearsay.
What we do know is the Portuguese want to protect their tourism at any cost?

The McCanns left 2 infants and a toddler unattended, that is not hearsay. What is the punishment in the UK and Portugal for this act? Prison sentence?
The Portuguese want to protect tourism but also punish acts of child cruelty and neglect, unfortunately politics got involved in this case and the McCanns got away without explaining their lies to the Portuguese police. The McCanns lying to the police is on record by the way not hearsay.

-3 #15 JamesAlgarve 2019-06-12 08:02

Luckily we live in a society where the laws state innocent UNTIL proven guilty.
You are simply relying on conjecture and hearsay.
What we do know is the Portuguese want to protect their tourism at any cost?

+5 #14 AL 2019-06-11 09:07

Quoting JamesAlgarve:

So much hostility.

Child neglect and abuse is not something people sympathise with especially when you see the culprits avoiding punishment.

-6 #13 JamesAlgarve 2019-06-11 07:44

So much hostility.
I found the Netflix documentary a scary insight into the Portuguese police and legal system.

Would recommend people watch it

+10 #12 AL 2019-06-10 10:54

How much more money can you throw at this investigation to try convince the general public that the child was abducted?
The little investigation that was allowed to be conducted showed no signs of breaking and entering or abduction from the apartment where Madeleine and her siblings were left unattended. The investigation also showed that the parents of the child lied to the police and were unwilling to cooperate with the investigation. You don't need 300k pounds to interrogate the McCanns again.

+5 #11 Dorothy 2019-06-09 18:28

Quoting Hamilton:

As others have pointed out elsewhere, the FCO has grievously failed us British several decades ago in not warning all of us about the effect on the Portuguese psyche of the 1890 Ultimatum and the Berlin Congo Conference just a few years earlier. The anti-British hostile outcome of which must have so distressed the McCanns over the years; what the Portuguese Embassy can only bring itself to call a 'misunderstanding' with no helpful mention of their consequent national inferiority complex in having a popular Portuguese National Anthem chorus of (but shhh - ever so secret) "attack the British on Land and Sea". The McCann parents must have been told by Murat about this as he had grown up amongst indigenous Portuguese but then, on meeting British diplomats get told not to mention it. As "We British Civil Service mandarins earnestly hope the Portuguese grow out of it and so we are playing with a straight bat as white men on this."
Totally ignorant that Portugal is not a cricketing nation and that white men from the north upended their 'culture' a thousand years ago and the Portuguese were never going to let it happen again.

................
I hope you find these ranting sessions are of benefit to your mental health, but to be honest, readers of the ADN are running low in humility.
So please find a Therapist and give us a break.

+5 #10 nobulls hit 2019-06-09 14:18

Quoting charly:

...And unfortunately it has to be said: the loss of their daughter made the parents "very rich people" . Funny and crazy world, isn't it ?

Well, that was their goal, wasn't it?

+1 #9 Darcy 2019-06-08 23:27

Quoting Hamilton:

As others have pointed out elsewhere, the FCO has grievously failed us British several decades ago in not warning all of us about the effect on the Portuguese psyche of the 1890 Ultimatum and the Berlin Congo Conference just a few years
earlier. The anti-British hostile outcome of which must have so distressed the McCanns over the years; what the Portuguese Embassy can only bring itself to call a 'misunderstanding' with no helpful mention of their consequent national inferiority complex in having a popular Portuguese National Anthem chorus of (but shhh - ever so secret) "attack the British on Land and Sea". The McCann parents must have been told by Murat about this as he had grown up amongst indigenous Portuguese but then, on meeting British diplomats get told not to mention it. As "We British Civil Service mandarins earnestly hope the Portuguese grow out of it and so we are playing with a straight bat as white men on this."
Totally ignorant that Portugal is not a cricketing nation and that white men from the north upended their 'culture' a thousand years ago and the Portuguese were never going to let it happen again.

......................................................

TAXI.........

+6 #8 charly 2019-06-07 19:25

As everybody reminds at the time of the "crime" it was the McCans' personal friend the Secretary of State who provided the funds and facilitated the Met's investigations. Today however this sharade became a cometition between incompetent police forces - the Met and the Portugese PJ and "the outcome" is no longer relevant. Even today half of the "suspects" never had been questioned, neither by the ones or by the others…. And unfortunately it has to be said: the loss of their daughter made the parents "very rich people" . Funny and crazy world, isn't it ?

+11 #7 nogin the nog 2019-06-07 16:55

hmm.
I don't know at what point as a parent you stop looking for your child. But as a parent I have responsibility of care and something is very wrong when young children are left to fend for them selves and the parents are not investigated and brought to account for there actions..

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