What happened to Madeleine
McCann?
50 more facts
about the case that the British media are not telling you
PLEASE COPY THIS LEAFLET OR
PASS IT TO OTHERS WHEN YOU’VE READ IT – THANK YOU
In this leaflet: “Meet the McCann Team”
·
Details about
the main members of the McCann Team
·
We name the 10
main private detectives used by the McCanns
·
How the
McCanns have spent the money you kindly donated to them
·
The four dodgy
McCann detectives who have all spent time in jail
This
leaflet is a follow-up to our well-received earlier leaflet on the reported
disappearance of Madeleine McCann, titled: “50 facts about the case that the British media are not telling you”. The
British mainstream media continue to cover up facts concerning Madeleine’s
disappearance. Our second leaflet takes a close look at the people behind the
McCanns’ campaign, and the strange people - some of them criminals - that they’ve
used in what they say is a genuine search to find their missing daughter. You
can see a video of our earlier leaflet on YouTube, in 4 parts, at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXtYSeXSiw
In
our earlier leaflet, we asked this question: “Can we be sure that Madeleine
McCann really was abducted by a stranger?” Once again, we invite you to take a
careful look at these facts about the case, most of which you won’t mentioned or analysed in any of our
mainstream media. We have added some references and links in case you may wish
to look further into this controversial case. When you’ve read the leaflet, please
pass it on to your friends and contacts so that they too can read all the
information in it. We have numbered our points from No. 51 onwards, as this
leaflet is a continuation of our first one in this series.
SECTION A. Who are the main
members of the McCann Team?
51.
There have always been three main people supporting the McCanns
throughout:
(a)
Their chief public relations spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, former head of Tony Blair’s Media Monitoring
Unit, who once boasted that his job was ‘to control what comes out in the media’
(b)
Their ‘co-ordinating lawyer’ throughout, Edward Smethurst, a high-profile lawyer, multi-millionaire
businessman and property-owner from Rochdale, high-ranking Freemason and past
‘Grand Master’, and
(c)
Multi-millionaire Cheshire businessman and owner of Sale Sharks Rugby
club, Brian Kennedy.
Clarence Mitchell
WBro Edward Smethurst
Edward Smethurst is not only the McCanns’
chief lawyer (they have used over 20 different lawyers so far), but is also a
Director of the controversial ‘Find Madeleine’ Fund. This is not a charity but is registered as a
private limited company. It benefits the McCann family and is controlled by
them. It was supposed to raise money to search for Madeleine, but instead, much
of the money you donated has been used to pay lawyers and public relations
staff. It’s also funded ‘private investigators’, which you’ll find a lot more
about in this leaflet. Curiously, from 1999, Smethurst holidayed every year
with members of his three families (he has
six children by three women) in Praia da Luz, the very place where Madeleine was
reported missing.
This leaflet will focus on Brian Kennedy,
the organisations and men he’s used on behalf of the McCanns for the past six
years, using donations from generous
members of the public, to search for Madeleine.
SECTION B. Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy
Brian Kennedy
52.
Brian Kennedy has made a fortune, worth hundreds of millions, from his
business activities. He owns the Latium group of companies, based in Wilmslow,
Cheshire. He lives in a multi-million pound mansion at Swettenham Hall, near
Crewe, Cheshire. He is a Jehovah’s Witness. His in-house lawyer for the past
decade has been Edward Smethurst, the Masonic lawyer we mentioned above.
53.
According to Kate McCann’s book, ‘madeleine’, Kennedy got Smethurst to
ring the McCanns on 12 September 2007 to offer help, just five days after the
McCanns had been made suspects, and two days after they had returned to
England. Kennedy then bought a house in Knutsford, Cheshire, and has used that
ever since as the base for the McCann Team’s private investigations. There is evidence,
however, that Brian Kennedy may have been working behind the scenes for the McCanns
well before September 2007.
54. According to Kate McCann, Kennedy first met the McCanns on 14 September 2007. Within days, Kennedy had appointed a controversial Spanish detective
agency, Metodo 3. He also appointed a Nottingham man, Gary Hagland, whose job included
liaising with Metodo 3 staff. Metodo 3 and Hagland had expertise and experience
in money-laundering and fraud - but not in
looking for missing children.
Jane Tanners' Bundleman
55.
Kennedy paid Melissa Little to mock up two artists’ impressions of
possible suspects. She said she was ‘FBI-trained’, which could mean anything.
She describes herself as a ‘forensic artist’. She first sketched the man who
Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns’ friends, claimed to have seen carrying a young
child near the McCanns’ apartment on the evening Madeleine was reported
missing. There are many reasons to question her story. She changed, several times, her description of the
man she said she’d seen. She said that, at the time, she walked past Gerry
McCann and another Ocean Club guest along a narrow lane. But both agreed that
they had not seen her, nor had either of them seen the alleged abductor. The sketch she
produced, however, wasn’t released until late October 2007, nearly six months after Madeleine was reported missing.
Tanner admitted didn’t see the face of the man she said she’d seen. Even if Tanner
really had seen someone, it was far too late to be any use. The sketch did
however make the front pages of most British newspapers.
56.
Shortly afterwards, Brian Kennedy paid for Little to draw another sketch - this time of a man said
to have been acting suspiciously in the days before Madeleine was reported
missing. He was said to have been collecting for charity. One of two people who
claimed to have seen this man, however, Ms Gail Cooper, also changed her story,
rendering it doubtful. The other person, Paul Gordon, later said he had been
‘pressurised’ by Brian Kennedy to say things about the sighting of this this
man that he didn’t want to say.
57.
On 28 August 2009, the Evening Standard published a hard-hitting
article by Mark Hollingsworth on the McCanns’ private investigation. It has
since removed the article from its website for what it says are ‘editorial
and/or legal reasons’, but it can still be read here - Link: http://www.mccannfiles.com/id285.html Hollingsworth said his article was based on
information ‘from several sources’. The article made a number of serious
allegations against Kennedy, who has never denied them, nor sued for libel,
including these:
·
That Kennedy’s investigators questioned potential witnesses about Madeleine’s
disappearance ‘far too aggressively’. Some refused to talk to police [NOTE:
Under English law, such conduct could amount to
intimidating witnesses and perverting the course of justice, offences carrying
14-year maximum jail terms].
·
That the involvement of Kennedy and his son Patrick had been
‘counter-productive’
·
That the relationship between the Portuguese police and Metodo 3 had
‘completely broken down’
·
That his investigators ‘had little experience of the required
painstaking forensic detective work’.
58.
Kennedy sent two Metodo 3 investigators to Morocco. There were reports
that Moroccans were offered money if they would claim to have seen a child
looking like Madeleine. During the Leveson enquiry, Daily Express journalist David Pilditch admitted the Express had indeed paid one such person
500 euros.
59.
On 13 November 2007, Kennedy met Portuguese police in Portimao in the
company of the boss of Metodo 3, Francisco Marco, and their chief investigator
on the Madeleine McCann case, Antonio Giminez Raso (more about both below). The
three of them claimed to have ‘important new leads’. However, none of them were
of any value whatsoever to the police, who later cut all ties with Metodo 3.
60.
On the same date, 13 November 2007, Kennedy, accompanied by his lawyer
Edward Smethurst, secretly met the chief suspect in the case, Robert Murat, and
his lawyer, Francisco Pagarete. Three members of Murat’s family were also at
the meeting: his mother ,and uncle and aunt Ralph and Sally Eveleigh. When news
of this meeting leaked out two weeks later, Kennedy was asked what he was doing
interfering in a criminal investigation by talking to the chief suspect in the
case. He claimed that he had met Murat ‘in order to offer Murat a job helping
to find Madeleine’, an unconvincing explanation of his mysterious meeting.
SECTION C.
Metodo 3 - A highly controversial Spanish detective agency
Marita Férnandez Lago
61.
Brian Kennedy, on behalf of the McCann Team, appointed Metodo 3, a
controversial Spanish detective agency, based in Barcelona, allegedly to look
for Madeleine. They had no experience whatsoever in looking for missing people,
let alone missing children. In 1995, their boss,
Marita Férnandez Lago, was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, along with other members of
her staff, on suspicion of illegal hacking of telephones, corruption, and other
offences. In the end, the charges were dropped, but suspicions of illegal
conduct remained. The main expertise of Metodo 3 was in filed such as money
laundering and fraud.
Francisco Marco
62.
In December 2007, Metodo 3 boss Francisco Marco made a series of false
claims about Madeleine. In stories reported on the front pages of Britain’s
tabloids, he claimed that:
·
Madeleine was alive and his men knew where Madeleine was
·
His men knew who had abducted Madeleine and were ‘closing in on the
kidnappers’, and that
·
Madeleine would be ‘home by Christmas’. These were deliberate lies.
63.
Despite these deliberate lies, which misled the general public with
false hopes that Madeleine was alive and would be found, the McCann Team kept
employing Metodo 3 for another 18 months. Indeed, the McCanns’ official
spokesman Clarence Mitchell, said at the time that: “We remain absolutely
confident in Metodo 3 and their operational capacity to find Madeleine”.
64.
Metodo 3 boasted that they had ‘40 detectives’ working on the Madeleine
McCann private investigation. When Times
journalist Christine Toomey visited their plush new offices in Barcelona in
January 2008, however, she found that:
·
there was no sign of activity, no sound of ’phones ringing, nor any
other signs that an active investigation was going on
·
they boasted that they had ‘found 23 missing children’ but could provide
no proof or evidence
·
they terminated the interview with her as soon as she started asking
difficult questions.
65.
In 2009 Metodo 3 were criticised by the Spanish government over
excessive claims made by them for work they carried out under a government contract
concerning an agricultural project.
SECTION D. Francisco
Marco: Boss of Metodo 3 (see also above)
66.
In early 2013, Francisco Marco, the boss of Metodo 3, and several of his
staff, were arrested and remanded in custody on charges of systematic illegal
’phone tapping of political and business figures. Some have since admitted
their crimes. Metodo 3 was forced to pay £30,000 damages to one of the senior
political figures whose conversations they had illegally tapped at a Barcelona
restaurant. At the time of writing this leaflet, several Metodo 3 staff are
facing trial, and the agency has been forced to close.
SECTION E. Antonio
Giminez Raso: Metodo 3’s top investigator
67.
Antonio Giminez Raso was Metodo 3’s lead investigator on the Madeleine
McCann case, working closely with boss Francisco Marco. He was a Police
Inspector in the Anti-Drug and Children Trafficking Department of Catalonia. He
was either dismissed or resigned from the Police in late 2004 or early 2005 and
soon afterwards joined Metodo 3. He has never explained why he left the police.
68.
On 18 February 2008, Antonio Giminez Raso (and his brother) were
arrested and remanded in custody - with 25 others said to belong to a vicious
27-strong gang of drug-dealers. Several of those accused were corrupt police
officers. He was alleged to have supplied the drug-dealers inside information,
enabling them to steal 200kg of cocaine worth around £25 million from a boat in
Barcelona harbour. He spent the next 4 years in jail, awaiting trial. In the
end he was acquitted because of insufficient evidence against him, but the
judge held that in his role as a police officer, he had been ‘far too close’ to
members of the gang.
69.
When news of Antonio Giminez Raso’s arrest on serious charges became
public, the media stated that he had been a McCann Team investigator. The McCanns’
chief public relations spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, immediately went to the
media, claiming: “He has nothing to do with us”. That was a lie.
The Arade Dam
70.
On 10 December 2007, Antonio Giminez Raso from Metodo 3 met, at the
Arade Dam, Portugal, with Madeira-based lawyer, Marcos Aragao Correia (see
below). Each had travelled about 500 miles to be present at this meeting. Both
were employed by the McCann Team and worked closely with Kennedy. Here, they
plotted how to develop lurid front-page headlines in the British and Portuguese
press a few weeks later.
Marcos Aragao Correia
71.
At the end of January 2008, one story about Madeleine McCann dominated
the British press. This news was what was then claimed to be a genuine search
for Madeleine’s bones in the Arade Dam. The British people were told that
Marcos Aragao Correia, who said he was just a ‘Good Samaritan’ funding the
search of the lake from his own pocket, had been told by the Portuguese
criminal underworld that Madeleine, within three days of her reported
disappearance, had been raped, killed, and her body thrown into the Arade Dam.
He said he was ‘certain’ her body had been thrown into the Arade Dam, later claiming
that he was ‘99% certain’ her bones would be found there. This was no genuine
search. The whole stunt had been closely
planned with Antonio Giminez Raso and Metodo 3. There’s more about this story
at this link:
72.
Later, Marcos Aragao Correia admitted that he had been paid by Metodo 3,
who were working for the McCanns on the Arade Dam project, and had asked him to
perform this publicity stunt. The McCanns pretended to be stunned by this
search for Madeleine’s bones. The truth is that they knew all along that this
stunt would be staged - just to provide more sensational headlines for the
British press.
73.
Marcos Aragao Correia recovered some bones and a child’s sock from the lake.
He claimed they could be ‘animal or human bones’ and handed them to Antonio Giminez
Raso. They were in fact animal bones. The British public had been deceived into
thinking that this was a bona fide search.
SECTION F. Julian
Peribanez: Another corrupt Metodo 3 investigator
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Julian Peribanez
74.
Julian Peribanez was another key Metodo 3 private investigator. He
worked closely with Nottingham man Gary Hagland (see below), and alongside
Antonio Giminez Raso. He was briefly filmed whilst on a visit to Portugal,
link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-74ragUCC8Y
As
the cameraman moved towards him, he was quick to hide his face with a map.
Together with Hagland, he also interviewed two sisters from England, Jayne
Jensen and Annie Wiltshire, resulting in yet another sensational story about
‘two blonde men’ seen - allegedly - acting suspiciously in the hours before
Madeleine was reported missing. Their story was dubious and has never been substantiated.
75.
In February 2013 Peribanez was arrested, along with several other Metodo
3 investigators, on suspicion of illegal telephone tapping. He has admitted his
guilt and is awaiting sentence.
SECTION G. Gary Hagland: Brian Kennedy’s right-hand man
Gary Hagland
76.
Days after the McCanns had returned to England from Portugal in
September 2007, Kennedy appointed Nottingham man Gary Hagland as his right-hand man in England. Hagland’s
credentials for searching for a missing child were non-existent. Just like the
staff from Metodo 3, Hagland had experience - and a qualification - in money
laundering; indeed he wrote articles on the subject for a professional
magazine. An article in the Financial
Times on 30 March 2001 described him as: “A consultant with law firm Wragge
& Co, advising clients on the active management of compliance risks, including money laundering”. An article
in Money Laundering Bulletin referred
to his former career as an Intelligence Officer in the Royal Hong Kong Police.
He also had connections with the British security services.
77.
During the seven months he worked for Kennedy, Gary Hagland was based in
Kennedy’s Knutsford investigation headquarters, but he also visited Praia da
Luz (where Madeleine disappeared) and went to Metodo 3’s offices in Barcelona.
He was instrumental in arranging, with the help of the King of Morocco, for
Metodo 3 investigators to be allowed to search for Madeleine in Morocco in the
autumn of 2007. He stopped working for Kennedy in March 2008, convinced that
the search for Madeleine was ‘heading in the wrong direction’. He later
confided to a Madeleine McCann researcher that he was ‘carrying a heavy burden’
about his involvement in the Madeleine McCann investigation. There is more about
Hagland here:
http://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t7348-gary-hagland-on-the-mccann-team-s-preparations-to-look-for-madeleine-in-morocco-and-how-the-king-of-morocco-gave-permission-for-metodo-3-to-enter-his-country
SECTION H. Marcos Aragao
Corriea: The strange lawyer from Madeira
78.
It is clear that Marcos Aragao Corriea, a young lawyer from the
Portuguese island of Madeira, had become a member of the McCann Team at least
by November 2007, if not before. He performed two main functions for the McCann
Team. As we saw above, he created a publicity storm in late January 2008 with a
bogus search for Madeleine’s bones in the Arade Dam. Perhaps even more
important to the McCann Team, he was employed by them to target the McCanns’
main opponent, Dr Goncalo Amaral, the man who made the McCanns suspects in
their daughter’s disappearance in September 2007.
Leonor Cipriano
79.
On 8 April 2008 (shortly after the Arade Dam stunt), Marcos Aragao Corriea
visited Odemira Women’s Prison, met with the Prison Governor there, and began interviewing
one of its most notorious inmates: Leonor Cipriano. He struck a deal with her, promising her early release
from prison if she would make false allegations against Dr Amaral. In 2004, Cipriano and her brother Joao Cipriano had brutally murdered
her 8-year-old daughter, Joana, after she caught them in an act of incest. Both
voluntarily admitted their crime. Joao Cipriano later gave graphic details of
how they murdered Joana and disposed of her body. The two had set the whole of
Portugal on a wild goose chase by pretending that Joana had been abducted. The
investigating co-ordinator who exposed this as a deliberate lie was Dr Amaral,
the man who first investigated the Madeleine McCann case. Amaral secured the
conviction of both Joana’s mother and uncle in 2005. They are now serving long
jail terms; more details here: http://www.mccannfiles.com/id176.html
80.
Marcos Aragoa Correia had, in fact, been instructed by the McCanns, via
Metodo 3, to damage Dr Amaral by representing Leonor Cipriano in a criminal
complaint against Dr Amaral; Link:
Leonor
Cipriano claimed that injuries she suffered - almost certainly from other
inmates on her admission to prison - were caused by brutality and torture inflicted
by Dr Amaral and four other police officers in a police station, when she was
arrested. Marcos Aragao Corriea represented her in criminal proceedings that
were adjourned five times and lasted over 18 months. The court’s final verdict
was that there was no proof of any torture or beatings. Leonor Cipriano
completely failed to prove her case, and was exposed as a serial liar who
changed her story many times. However, in a strange ruling, Dr Amaral and
another officer were convicted of ‘filing a false report’. When the verdict was
announced, Marcos Aragao Correia was unconcerned about failing to prove the
alleged brutality of police officers. Instead, he exulted: ‘The target was hit’
– by which he meant that he had succeeded in securing a conviction against Dr
Amaral. However, his client Leonor Cipriano was handed an extra seven years in
jail on top of her original 16-year prison term.
81.
Marcos Aragao Correia had
earlier told journalists that he had become interested in the Madeleine McCann
case because underworld sources had told him that Madeleine had been killed.
Later, he was challenged about this, and asked why he hadn’t given this
information to the Portuguese police much earlier. He then candidly admitted
that he’d blatantly lied. He then produced a totally different account of how
he had become interested in the case. This
time, he maintained that he had gone to his ‘first-ever’ Spiritualist church
meeting on the Saturday after Madeleine was reported missing. On returning
home, he claims that he had a ‘vision’ of a huge man strangling a young blond-haired
child. Later still, he admitted that that was also a lie. The question must be
asked: For what reason did the McCann Team hire and pay for a man who came up
with terrible stories of what might have happened to Madeleine, neither of
which turned out to be true?
82.
Shortly after
being summoned by the McCanns to give evidence at the McCanns’ libel action
against Goncalo Amaral last year (which was later postponed), Marcos Aragao
Correia fled to Brazil, saying he would
never return to Portugal. Within a few
weeks of his move to Brazil, the media reported another sighting of Madeleine McCann
in Brazil. Once again this turned out to be false.
SECTION I. Melissa Little:
FBI-trained ‘forensic artist’
83.
Brian Kennedy paid Melissa Little to sketch the man Jane Tanner said she
had seen, and, later, another moustachioed man said to have been acting
suspiciously (see Facts 55 & 56 above). Despite the obvious differences in
the two sketches, and despite the fact that Jane Tanner said did not see any
part of the man’s face, she (Tanner) said that the two sketches looked like
they might be of the same person.
84.
The Portuguese police dismissed the sketch of the man allegedly seen by McCann friend Jane Tanner as having ‘no credibility’ and accused the McCanns of ‘diverting attention away from themselves’. Carlos Anjos, president of the Police Inspectors Union, said: “All sense has been completely lost”. Another police source said the picture was based on information ‘without any consistency’, showing a man who could be ‘one of hundreds of people’. Besides that, the woman whose description of the man was relied upon changed her story twice, leading the police to doubt whether there was any value in her evidence.
SECTION J. Kevin Halligen, serial fraudster
Kevin Halligen
85.
One of the most baffling decisions of all was the McCann Team’s decision
to hire Kevin Halligen, part of a two-man team who set up an intelligence
agency called Oakley International. The other was Henri Exton (see below). When
news leaked out about Halligen’s involvement, the McCann Team concealed his
identity and described Oakley International as ‘the big boys of international
detective work’. It was a calculated lie. Oakley had been formed after Madeleine McCann was reported
missing - and consisted just of these two men. Neither man had any experience
of looking for missing children.
86.
The true nature of Halligen
was revealed in a long, well-researched article in the Evening Standard by Mark Hollingsworth, on 28 August 2009 (see
above, Fact No. 57). The full article can be read on the McCannFiles website, here:
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id285.html Hollingsworth said of
Halligen:
·
He claimed to have worked at
GCHQ, but this claim was false. He also claimed that he used to work for MI5,
MI6 and the CIA; none of those claims could be substantiated
·
He was described by several
observers as ‘a Walter Mitty’ figure
·
He called himself ‘Patrick’ or
‘Richard’ as well as Kevin, his real first name. The McCanns say they ‘only
knew him as Richard Halligen’.
·
He made a small fortune
representing controversial Dutch firm Trafigura, some of whose executives were
jailed in Ivory Coast after the company dumped toxic waste there. After failing
to get the executives released, Halligen was sacked by Trafigura, who later had
to pay £1.3 million to the Ivory Coast government to get them freed ( Link:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/dc/news/2013/jun/13-230.html
). Halligen had been a costly waste of money. These and many other disturbing
facts about him (see below), raised the question of whether the McCanns did proper
‘due diligence’ on Halligen and Exton. They were spending money kindly donated
by you, the public, and one would expect them to take care in who they chose to
work for them.
87.
Halligen and Exton were
reported to have charged the McCann Team a fee of £100,000 a month plus
expenses. In the first month of the contract, he claimed over £50,000 in
expenses, on top of his fee. He was paid
large sums of money upfront, despite him producing nothing of value. Hollingsworth
wrote that: “During the Madeleine investigation, Halligen spent vast amounts of
time in the HeyJo bar in the basement of the Abracadabra Club near his Jermyn
Street office...the bar was in effect his office”. A former colleague said: “He
was there virtually the whole day”. During the time the McCanns employed
Halligen, they were advertising ‘an investigation hotline’ for members of the
public to ring with any information. Halligen arranged for a company, iJet, based in West Virginia, U.S., to
handle the calls. However, the Director of iJet
later complained that neither the McCann Team nor Kevin Halligen had
followed up any calls to the hotline,
as highlighted in this Daily Mail
article. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231757/Madeleine-McCann-investigator-didnt-listen-ANY-tip-offs-given-hotline--squandered-500-000.html The Mail
article rightly condemned Halligen
for having ‘squandered £500,000’. Yet the McCanns have never sued
Halligen.
88.
Andrew Hollis, a former US
Drug enforcement agency official, paid £55,000 to Halligen for a 10%
shareholding in Oakley International. But Halligen transferred the money into his
private bank account, using it to pay for him and his girlfriend Shirin
Trachiotis to have a lavish holiday in Italy. Hollingsworth wrote that: “In a £4
million lawsuit filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, Hollis alleged that Halligen
‘received monies for Oakley’s services rendered and deposited this into his
personal accounts’ and ‘systematically depleted funds from Oakley’s bank
accounts for inappropriate personal expenses’.”
Another victim was Mark Aspinall, a lawyer who worked closely with
Halligen, who invested £500,000 in Oakley and lost the lot. Aspinall filed a lawsuit
in Washington DC against Halligen, claiming £1 million in damages.
Halligen - arrested
89.
When Hollingsworth wrote his
article, Halligen was on the run from the police. He wrote: “He has gone into hiding,
leaving a trail of debt and many former business associates and creditors
looking for him. He was last seen in January of this year in Rome, drinking and
spending prodigiously at the Hilton Cavalieri and Excelsior hotels”. Thanks to an observant hotel
guest, he was spotted at a £700-a-night Oxfordshire hotel in October 2009, who
reported him to the police. The police promptly arrested him, taking him off to
Belmarsh top security prison. He then spent three years there fighting
extradition to the U.S., costing the Briitsh taxpayer tens of thousands of
pounds in Legal Aid. Eventually he was successfully extradited to the U.S., where
he admitted his guilt and spent further time in prison. Why did the McCanns
employ this rogue?
SECTION K.
Henri Exton, business partner of Kevin Halligen
Henri Exton
90.
Henri Exton, former business partner of Kevin Halligen, is a former Greater
Manchester Police undercover officer. From 1991, he worked for MI5. In 2002, he
was arrested for shoplifting. Whilst working on an MI5 surveillance operation,
Exton was caught leaving a tax-free shopping area at Manchester airport with an
expensive item he hadn’t paid for. The police were called. He was given the
option of the offence being dealt with under caution, or face prosecution. He
chose a police caution, thereby admitting his guilt. He was sacked by MI5. Furious
at the decision to dismiss him, Exton then threatened to sue MI5.
SECTION L.
Dave Edgar, retired police officer from Crewe
Dave Edgar with Clarence Mitchell
91.
Kennedy, in November 2008, appointed Dave
Edgar, former Detective Inspector who lives near him in Cheshire, to head up
the McCann Team’s private investigation. He had served in Northern Ireland. He
first came to public attention when he was filmed in Kennedy’s Knutsford office
for a Channel 4 documentary, shown in May 2009. On film, he was asked about
obvious contradictions in the evidence given by Gerry McCann, his friend Jane
Tanner, and another witness. Instead of suggesting, as any experienced police
officer should do, that witnesses who give contradictory evidence should be
further probed as to the accuracy of their stories, he airily dismissed these
contradictions by saying: “Where you get a number of witnesses at an event, you
always get inconsistencies”.
92.
In
August 2009, Edgar came to prominence again when he appeared with Clarence
Mitchell at a press conference. At this conference, the McCann Team claimed
they had ‘credible evidence’ from a British banker who had been drinking in the
pubs of Barcelona docklands for several hours, three nights after Madeleine had
been reported missing. He apparently claimed that a young woman, who looked
like Victoria Beckham, with an Australian accent, had approached him at 2.00am on
the quayside and asked: “Have you got my new daughter?” He was said to have
waited two years to tell the police about this alleged incident. Edgar
seriously tried to maintain that his was ‘a strong lead’. The banker insisted
on remaining anonymous.
93.
At this very same
press conference, Edgar made the astounding claim that Jane Tanner, on the
night Madeleine had been reported missing, might have seen a woman carrying a child near the McCanns’
apartment, not a man. This, of course, completely blew apart Tanner’s detailed
description of a man she said she’d seen
carrying a child. Not one of the British media drew the public’s attention to Edgar’s
astonishing claim, which totally undermined Tanner’s evidence.
94.
Following this
conference, the Mail on Sunday went
to Barcelona and researched the story. They discovered that the McCann Team,
under Edgar, had done no work at all there to support their apparent belief in
the credibility of their tale. They listed the failures of the McCann Team’s
detectives. They…
·
failed to speak to anyone working at the seafood restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen
·
failed to ask the port authority about movement of boats around the time Madeleine disappeared
·
failed to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV
·
knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished - until told by British journalists, who gave them the captain’s mobile phone number
·
failed to interview anyone at a nearby dockside bar where, according to Mr Edgar, the mystery woman was later seen drinking, and
·
failed to ask British diplomats in Spain for advice before or during the visit.
Edgar had to apologise, but
blamed others: He said: “We are not
above criticism and I take responsibility for any shortcomings. If somebody has
not done what they should have done, that’s my job to deal with that”. Many
suspected that the press conference was just for show, and was not a
‘strong lead’ after all. In his article
about Kevin Halligen in the Evening
Standard, Mark Hollingsworth had written: “Within days [of the press
conference], reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to
make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough,
while Tom Worden, in the Mail on Sunday, added: “The detectives failed to make even rudimentary inquiries before announcing a ‘significant’ development in the worldwide search for the six-year-old”.
95.
Days later, on 26
August, news emerged that Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was been abducted at the age
of eleven and been missing for 18 years, had been found alive. She had been
kept prisoner by convicted sex offender Phillip Craig Garrido. Huge publicity about the case
followed. It had echoes of the revelations about the underground lair where Josef Fritzl
had kept his daughter, and Natasha Kampusch, the Austrian woman who escaped from captivity after eight
years being held by her abductor. The McCanns claimed that something like this could have happened to
Madeleine. Edgar then made statements to
the media that he was now ‘convinced’ Madeleine was being held in a similar
‘prison lair’ near Praia da Luz. Yet the McCann Teams did nothing whatsoever to
follow up Edgar’s suggestion. They organised no search of the area.
SECTION M.
Arthur Cowley, the pigeon fancier from Halkyn Mountain, Flintshire
Pigeon fancier Arthur Cowley at his local in the Halkyn Mountains
96.
Arthur Cowley was appointed by Brian Kennedy to assist Dave
Edgar. He and Edgar had been described by Clarence Mitchell as ‘a firm of crack
detectives’. Over a long career, Cowley had only managed to reach the rank of
Detective Sergeant. He had retired from the police years before, to his cottage
on Halkyn Mountain, 1,000 feet up in the Welsh hills, where he kept a few
horses and pigeons. Yet Kennedy chose him, with Edgar, to spearhead the McCann
Team’s private investigation. It is unclear what relevant experience he could
offer. Mysteriously, he set up what was claimed to be an investigations company
called ‘ALPHAIG’ in 2009, after he was chosen to work for the McCann Team (see
next section).
SECTION N.
ALPHAIG, a bogus company
The headquarters of the McCann private Investigation Company.
Alphaig Limited from June 2009
97.
Why did Arthur
Cowley set up ALPHAIG in 2009? The answer leads us back to Brian Kennedy.
Companies House records tell us that ALPHAIG was incorporated on 10 June 2009,
that is, months after both Cowley and
Edgar were recruited by Kennedy to the McCann private investigation team. The
registered office is given as Cowley’s home address: ‘Treetops’, Pant-y-Gof,
HALKYN, Flintshire, CH8 8DH. Cowley was a founding Director, so was a
‘shelf company’, Turner Little Company
Nominees Ltd, of North Yorkshire. This company resigned the same day, meaning
that Cowley was the sole Director of the ALPHAIG. There is no mention of Dave Edgar being
involved with this company in any shape or form. The trail leads back to Kennedy
because it was his friend and business partner, Andrew Dickman, who registered
the following internet domain name on 12 January 2009: alphaig.co.uk .
Why did Dickman do this? And why did Cowley form an investigations company,
months after Kennedy had employed him?
98.
These steps were
taken because the McCann Team wanted to give the press and public the false
impression that Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley were part of a well-established
private detective agency, the Alpha
Investigations Group. They successfully fooled the press and public into
believing this suggestion. This deliberate deception began on 14 May 2009, when
the Daily Mirror ran a story about
Edgar and Cowley in which they wrote the following: “Mr Edgar now runs the Alpha Investigations Group with business
partner Arthur Cowley”. At this stage, Cowley had not even (with Kennedy’s
help) registered his company. There was no ‘Alpha Investigations Group’ that
Edgar was ‘now running’. Many other newspapers ran with the false claim that
‘Edgar and Cowley now head up the Alpha Investigations Group.
99.
The accounts of Cowley’s ALPHAIG company revealed the following
information:
·
The company had
no employees
·
It had fixed
assets of just £630, a bank balance of £853, an a profit for the year of £8
·
Creditors owed £170;
liabilities were £1,644
ALPHAIG therefore had very little, if
any, equipment - and next to no cash. A firm of private investigators would need,
for example, sophisticated equipment, cameras, listening devices, computers and
cars. In addition, ALPHAIG had no website. It had no obvious means of being
contacted. There is no reference anywhere else to the existence of this company
except with reference to the McCann private investigation. There was nothing at
Arthur Cowley’s Welsh mountain cottage to suggest that this was the
headquarters of a prosperous, successful detective agency. Quite the reverse,
in fact.
SECTION O.
SUMMARY: What has the McCann Team achieved?
100.
The McCanns set up their private limited company, the ‘Find Madeleine
Fund’, within days of Madeleine going missing. No-one knows exactly how much
money they’ve raised from the public and from other sources, but we can safely
say: many millions of pounds. First of all they said that the money was mostly
to pay for lawyers. Then they changed that and said it was money to help find
Madeleine. This short leaflet has explained how they have spent much of your
money.
We have shown you, in a
short summary, how your money has been spent on a series of dubious, dodgy
firms of so-called ‘investigators’.
Four members of the McCanns
investigation team have spent spells in prison since working on the McCann
investigation team. Two of them were each in prison for over four years.
Exactly what have they
achieved?
Have the McCann Team given
us, the general public, any reliable information at all about where Madeleine
McCann might have been taken, and who might have taken her?
We will leave you to answer that question.
If you have found this leaflet of interest,
please pass it on to those you know.
Thank you
Thank you
Published by ‘The Madeleine McCann Research Group’ - 31 August 2013 Further reading:
http://vimeo.com/14180705
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5c3ld0j1Yo
www.mccannfiles.com
http://jillhavern.forumotion.net/
www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk
www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk
Watch the Portuguese detective’s documentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxGhlYTNisw
