A former Metropolitan Police Flying Squad chief has questioned whether the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann should continue.
The latest estimate of the money spent to date is £11 million with no arrests.
Madeleine went mission eight years ago and a dedicated team of Met officers have been making inquiries into the Portuguese case since 2011.
The Met fields a team of up to 31 detectives working exclusively on Operation Grange to find the missing girl who vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.
When British PM David Cameron promised a fund of £5 million in 2011 few imagined the case would have gone on for so long without any serious leads or arrests, or that the bill picked up by the British taxpayer would top £11 million.
The former head of the Met, John O'Connor, told the Sun newspaper’s Tom Wells,
“If there are no firm leads, and by that I mean no substantial operational things like active surveillance on suspects, then I'd have thought they should be considering winding it down.
"You can't keep chasing shadows - chasing sightings all over the world. It depends on whether the detectives are making any real progress. For me, it needs to be reviewed by a senior officer."
Earlier this year the head of the Metropolitan Police Federation John Tully called for the case to be dropped and the British detectives reassigned to homeland investigations, with the increasing threat from Islamic State jihadists a priority.
The McCann case at first was managed by Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood who handed over to DCI Nicola Wall last December.
Wall seems to have made as little progress as Redwood and the case politely can be said to have ‘stalled.’
Much of the money raised by the McCanns has been spent on private investigators as well as on PR management.
Not one shred of evidence as to what happened to Madeleine has been released and is thought unlikely to exist.
