***NEW - Reply received from Mike Penning M.P., Home Office, 6 Jun 2016*** (was: Reasons why the public need a report on Operation Grange: The letter

Written by Tony Bennett:  2nd May 2016

Below is the letter handed in to 10 Downing Street in Friday in support of the petition calling for a report on Operation Grange.

It includes an Appendix, namely the chapter from the book ‘The Smokescreen’ by Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit which exposed the lies behind the false claims made by Metodo 3 boss Francisco Marco about their so-called investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

The day before the petition was due to be handed in, I decided that the letter I had drafted needed an Addendum, to deal with the absurd claims made in most of the tabloid press last week that it was likely that three Portuguese burglars had, between them, abducted Madeleine, and that they could not be arrested because of non-co-operation by the Portuguese authorities.

It was during the petition’s life that I decided it must be presented personally at 10 Downing Street, together with a letter explaining why people had such concern about Operation Grange.

There were quite a few ‘nay-sayers’ who said the petition was ‘pointless’ and ‘a waste of time’. In that respect I an grateful for the comments of Joana Morais in another place this week who wrote: “It is surely better to do something than to do nothing”.

I thought of other people in history to whom people might have said: ‘Don’t bother’. Did some people say to Martin Luther: ‘Look, it’s pointless nailing  up those 95 theses, nothing will change’? Yet his brave action in doing so exposed the gross abuses being perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church, and led to the Reformation.

Before Emile Zola wrote his famous ‘J’accuse’ letter, did some people say, ‘You’re wasting your time’? Yet his courageous action, although it brought    him a great deal of persecution and opposition, inexorably exposed how rampant French anti-Semitism had led the French establishment to frame an innocent the Jew, Alfred Dreyfus, as a spy.

If my letter contains any mistakes, I apologise, please be so good as to point  them out. I am sure that some people will suggest that I have left important things out of the letter. Again, I am sorry if I have omitted any such, but please remember that, unlike any other member of CMOMM, I am under severe legal restrictions about what I can say publicly on the case.

It is intended here as a public record of major question marks about this most bizarre and extraordinary police investigation:

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PART ONE

Tony Bennett                                                    

e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com                                                                                              

Friday 29 April 2016
Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minster
10 Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A  2AA

BY HAND

Dear Mr Cameron

re: Petition on the Prime Minister’s website to order the Home Secretary to publish a report on the Madeleine McCann Enquiry [Operation Grange]


First of all thank you for continuing the previous practice of allowing people to submit petitions via the Downing Street Petition site, and also for facilitating my being able to deliver the petition results in person to you today.
The petition attracted 3,111 signatures. Its preamble states: “Enquiries by British (and Portuguese) police forces have cost around £15 million in 8 years. The public is now entitled to a full report on how that has been spent. The report should cover the role of the government, the security services & UK police forces”.
I appreciate that only those petitions that attract 10,000 or more signatories are entitled to a government reply. I am also aware that the police do not normally issue reports on their investigations.  However, in view of (a) the totally unprecedented media coverage the Madeleine McCann case has had for the past nine years, (b) the degree of concern that has regularly been expressed in many quarters about the way this operation was initially set up, (c) the way it has since been conducted, (d) the length of time of the operation – 5 years, and (e) its cost, estimated at around  £14 million so far, I trust you will feel able, on this occasion, to respond to the concerns expressed by many thousands of people - and of course the 3,111 who have signed the petition.
The highly unusual way the initial review was set up, the reasons for it, the very unusual remit, and the later setting-up of what amounted to an active police investigation on foreign soil are all factors that make this police investigation unprecedented.
Added to that, many of the public have repeatedly expressed why this particular missing child case has been singled out, why it has taken so long with no apparent prospect of success, and its £14 million cost. That cost, moreover, excludes the costs of: (1) the Portuguese Police operation, (2) the Leicestershire Police investigation, and (3) the controversial private investigations carried out by the McCanns, their benefactor, Cheshire-based businessman Brian Kennedy, and the Directors of the Find Madeleine Fund.
I now set out some of the main areas of concern on which, we suggest, the public is entitled to persuasive and honest answers:
A. The setting up of the initial Review, 12 May 2011



For two years, the McCanns had been unsuccessfully lobbying two successive Home Secretaries (Alan Johnson, and then Theresa May) to secure a Review. Then Kate McCann decided to publish a book on 11 May 2011, which the Sun newspaper began serialising three weeks beforehand. On 11 May, the Sun published a letter from the McCanns, direct to yourself, appealing for you to order a Review. The very next day you did order a Review.
Subsequently it emerged from credible sources ‘close to No. 10’, and widely publicised on the BBC and other news networks,
that you had been badgered into setting up the Review by Rebekah Brooks, the Chief Executive Officer of News International, which owns the Sun. There were credible reports that she had threatened you with ‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May’ if you did not accede to her request.
These issues were publicly aired by Lord Leveson at the lengthy public enquiry  held into press regulation. Rebekah Brooks was asked a direct question by Lord Leveson as to whether she had ‘threatened’ the Prime Minister in order for the McCanns to secure the Review they had been seeking. She said ‘No’. Lord Leveson then asked her ‘What word would you use, then?’ She smiled, winked and said ‘Persuaded’. It is clear therefore that, whatever words were spoken to you by Rebekah Brooks, she persuaded you to completely reverse decisions made by successive Home Secretaries over the past two years who, in their political and professional judgment, did not agree that there was a persuasive case for a review.
Any report to the public should investigate what Rebekah Brooks did say to you that caused you to order this Review.



Further, it was announced on the very same day (12 May) that the Home Secretary had agreed to establish a Review and had appointed Sir Paul Stephenson, then head of the Metropolitan Police (Met), to set it up. It is unlikely that all of that was done during the 24 hours between the Sun publishing the McCanns’ letter and your announcement of a Review. Any public report should explain how and when your decision was arrived at and whether, in fact, the McCanns’ letter in the Sun was a pre-planned move to enable you to announce the Review the following day.
B. The appointment of Detective Superintendent (DCS) Hamish Campbell as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) and the person who would decide the remit of the Review
A decision was taken, presumably by the then Head of the Met, Sir Paul Stephenson, to appoint DCS Hamish Campbell as the SIO in the case. He decided the remit of any review or investigation, which has proved controversial.
As any internet search reveals, DCS Campbell is best known for his actions in the case of the prosecution of an innocent man, Barry George/Bulsara, for the cold-blooded murder of TV presenter, Jill Dando, a murder that remains  unsolved to this day. He was the Investigating Officer. On evidence which he helped to assemble, Barry George/Bulsara was wrongly convicted of Jill Dando’s murder and served eight years in jail for a crime he did not commit. At the subsequent Court of Appeal hearing which led to the release of George/Bulsara, the judges suggested that there were strong indications that a trace of firearms residue which matched the known murder weapon of Jill Dando may have been deliberately planted in George/Bulsara’s coat pocket.
Another question which should be fully explained in any public report about Operation Grange is why an officer with such a poor record of criminal investigation and judgment should have been entrusted with this sensitive, high profile and complex investigation.
C. The conduct of Operation Grange: the chief suspects


There is widespread bafflement as to the conduct of Operation Grange.
One crucial aspect is their identification of the chief suspect allegedly responsible for abducting Madeleine McCann.

Until a BBC Crimewatch McCann Special transmitted on 14 October 2013, the chief suspect had been a man carrying a child said to have been seen by the McCanns’ ‘Tapas 7’ friend, Jane Tanner, at exactly 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May, about 45 minutes before Madeleine was reported missing. As Gerry McCann had given evidence that he had checked on his child between 9.05pm and 9.10pm that evening, it was assumed that this abductor must have snatched Madeleine immediately after Gerry McCann left the apartment to return to the Tapas restaurant.
Surprisingly, however, the McCann Team did not release an artist’s sketch of the man that Jane Tanner said she had seen until nearly six months later. This unidentified man remained the chief suspect when Operation Grange began their work in May 2011 and he continued to be featured on the Met Police and the McCanns’ websites for a further two-and-a-half years. This was despite the clear findings of the Portuguese Police enquiry that no reliance could be placed on Jane Tanner’s evidence.
DCI Redwood on the Crimewatch programme in October 2013 claimed to have ‘found’ this man, but gave a highly improbable account of how he came forward and what he had been doing that night. DCI Redwood, Operation Grange’s Investigating Officer, told the 6.7-million Crimewatch audience that the Met now thought this man had been taking his daughter home from a night crèche at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz.                
There were several unlikely features of DCI Redwood’s account, namely:
(a) The man had waited for well over six years before approaching the police to say he now thought he might, after all, have been the man seen by Jane Tanner that night


(b) He had been walking past the McCanns’ apartment at exactly the same time as the man Jane Tanner said she had seen a man


(c) He was said by DCI Redwood to have been wearing clothes that week ‘uncannily similar’ to those described by Jane Tanner


(d) He was also carrying a young girl


(e) He was also said to have been carrying her in exactly the same way as described by Jane Tanner.


(f) The viewing public were asked to believe that this man had only just come forward after six years and that, co-incidentally, he had no buggy with in which to carry the child, her mother was not with him, and he had no blanket or other covering to cover the child on a cold and windy night in Portugal – the temperature being only 13C at the time. In addition to all these improbable coincidences, if the man had indeed been walking in the same direction as the man seen by Jane Tanner, a map showed that he had clearly followed a mysteriously circuitous route from the night crèche to have been walking in that place in that direction.


The strange production of this man by DCI Redwood, six years and five months after Madeleine was reported missing, raised many questions and needs a full explanation.
If that was bizarre, then just as bizarre was the new chief suspect unveiled by DCI Redwood on the same programme, namely a man said to have been seen by several members of an Irish family at around 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May 2007, the very time that the McCanns were raising the alarm.
During the programme, DCI Redwood said that this man was ‘the centre of our focus’ – the new chief suspect. He also unveiled two quite different-looking e-fits and told the Crimewatch audience: ‘This is the man we are now looking for’.
It was obvious to those who have a working knowledge of the case that there were major problems about the reliability of both the alleged ‘sighting’ and the accompanying e-fits.
Here is a summary of the main issues about the alleged ‘sighting’ and the two different e-fits:
(a) No member of the Irish family contacted the police about their claimed sighting until 13 days later

(b) When they did so, it was the day after news came in that Robert Murat had been arrested. The father of the family had met Mr Murat on a number of previous occasions

(c) The family have given at least four contradictory reasons for why they delayed reporting their sighting

(d) The descriptions they gave of the person they said they saw matched in almost every respect the description given by the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner. Thus all three descriptions – Jane Tanner’s, the Irish family’s, and that of the ‘man from the crèche’ given out by DCI Redwood on the Crimewatch programme - are of an identical-looking man.

(e) As the Met Police have now claimed that this sighting was that of a man carrying his children home from the night crèche, whose description matched that of Jane Tanner, this then raises the question of whether the 10.00pm sighting by the Irish family was either (A) of the ‘man from the crèche’, still carrying his child home (unlikely in the extreme) or (B) of another man altogether – but who looked very much like him, and also carrying a young blonde girl in pyjamas with no covering on her to protect her from the cold

(f) When interviewed on 26 May 2007 in Portugal, all three members of the Irish family said that they would ‘never be able to recognise him if we saw him again’

(g) The e-fits that were shown on the BBC Crimewatch programme were produced by Henri Exton, the former Head of Covert Intelligence at MI5. He had been employed by the McCanns’ leading private investigator at the time. Kevin Halligen. Later, between 2009 and 2013, Halligen spent over four years in jail for committing a major, £1 million-plus fraud. No date has been given for when he drew up these e-fits, but from public statements made by the McCanns, it appear that he and Exton were employed for around four months between April and August 2008. It is reasonable to assume therefore that these e-fist were drawn up during those four months

(h) The claim that members of the Irish family were able to draw up not one, but two e-fits – of faces that looked quite different - 11 months or longer after their original sighting of him, seems unlikely in the extreme. All three Smiths who gave evidence in person to the Portuguese Police admitted that

(i) they had only managed to see the man for a few seconds at the very most

(j) it was dark at the timethe street lighting, in their own words, was ‘weak’, and

(k) they were unable to get a clear view of his face because his face was ‘turned down’ and allegedly partly hidden by the child he was carrying

(l) as can be seen, the two e-fits produced on Crimewatch by the Met Police look like quite different men. There is a big difference in the overall shape of the face, the size of the chin, length of the nose, hairstyle and so on. It is unusual, to say the very last, for any police force to produce two separate and quite different-looking images of a suspect that they really want to find.In addition to all the above reasons for questioning this claimed ‘sighting’, as a result of an article in the Sunday Times on 27 October 2013, we are now much better informed about the history of these e-fits. The Met Police said nothing about their history on BBC Crimewatch, despite knowing fine well what their history was.

But following the Sunday Times article, we now know:
(a) the e-fits were drawn up between April and August 2008

(b) they were shown to the McCanns by Henri Exton some time during this period

(c) the McCanns are on record as stating that they showed these e-fits to both the Portuguese Police and the Leicestershire Police ‘by’ October 2009. They have not been willing to give the actual dates they were disclosed to each police force

(d)according to the McCanns, neither police force considered that it was worth informing the public about these e-fits

(e) soon after Operation Grange was set up in May 2011, the McCanns showed these e-fits to Operation Grange

(f) Operation Grange did not act to show these e-fits to the public until the BBC Crimewatch programme of 14 October 2013.
Thus it was a minimum of 5 years and 2 months, possibly up to 5 years and 6 months, before these e-fits were shown to the public.
These very strange issues concerning the ‘sightings’ of three men all allegedly fitting the same description - and the precise circumstances of the history of the e-fits - cry out for the police to explain their conduct.
                                                                                                   
D. The conduct of Operation Grange: the BBC Crimewatch programme of 14 October 2013

I have already made reference to the Crimewatch programme.
The BBC admitted that it spent over 6 months and £1 million on the preparations for the programme.  The Met Police must have spent a similar amount. It received huge promotion by the BBC and the mainstream press, such that audience figures suggest it was watched by 6.7 million people - a Crimewatch record.  
During the programme, a purported reconstruction of the events of 3 May was shown to viewers. However, it was not faithful to the reported events of that evening. A host of material facts about that day that were made public in August 2008 when the Portuguese Police released full details of their  investigation  on a DVD. But nay of them were omitted from the Met/BBC reconstruction. This is highly unusual because normally a Crimewatch programne will disclose all leading material facts. For example, contradictory accounts of events and changes of story by some of the main witnesses were not featured in the programme. Thus the viewers did not get a balanced picture of events that day. That has led to concerns expressed by many that the programme was much more about public perception than about seeking relevant information from viewers - the normal purpose of Crimewatch.
That impression was underlined by the fact that the two e-fits were shown to a British audience but not to any audience in Portugal, where the actual alleged sighting happened. There must also be a major question mark about whether two different e-fits of a man allegedly seen six years and five months before the programme was transmitted were ever likely to bring in any new information. The Met Police’s response to a Freedom of Information question I submitted at the end of last year revealed that, two years further on, this ‘mystery man’ had still not been identified. And of course forensic enquiries conducted in the McCanns’ apartment revealed no forensic traces of any abductor.
E. The conduct of Operation Grange: reliance on the unreliable evidence provided by the McCanns’ own investigation team

CONTINUED ..

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t12739-new-reply-received-from-mike-penning-m-p-home-office-6-jun-2016-was-reasons-why-the-public-need-a-report-on-operation-grange-the-letter-handed-in-to-prime-minister-david-cameron-on-29-april-2016-in-support-of-the-petition

PART TWO

E. The conduct of Operation Grange: reliance on the unreliable evidence provided by the McCanns’ own investigation team

Early on in the life of Operation Grange, the Investigating Officer, DCI Andy Redwood, claimed that a major advantage of his investigation was that it ‘brought together’ evidence from three separate investigations, or ‘strands’: those of the Portuguese Police, Leicestershire Police, and the McCanns’ own investigation team.

This raised a major issue of what reliance could be placed on any ‘evidence’ from the McCanns’ own investigation team, given that all the following facts have emerged during the past nine years:

1. The initial detective team they appointed, Barcelona-based Metodo 3, was highly controversial, with a chequered history including its directors having been arrested in a major telephone tapping scandal

2. Its Director, Francisco Marco, issued a stream of lies during December 2007, claiming, inter alia, that:

(a) They knew Madeleine was alive
(b) They knew where she was being held
(c) They were closing in on the kidnappers, and
(d) Madeleine would be ‘home for Christmas’.

Despite these very blatant untruths, the Directors of the Find Madeleine Fund continued to employ them for many months, according to some reports up to March 2009.

3.In February 2008, one of Metodo 3’s top investigators on the Madeleine McCann investigation was remanded in custody - and spent four years in prison - on serious charges of theft of cocaine and corruption charges (before being employed by the McCann, he had been a Detective Inspector on the Catalonia Regional Drugs Squad. He had been close to a 27-strong gang of career criminals and drugs dealers who were described by the judge hearing the case as ‘exceptionally violent’.

4. Furthermore, in 2012, several staff of Metodo 3 who worked for the McCanns were arrested and charged with illegal telephone tapping, charges which they admitted.

5. Moreover, in 2014, two former Metodo 3 investigators, Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit, wrote a book; ‘La Cortina de Humo’ - The Smokescreen - which demonstrated how Metodo 3’s boss, Francisco Marco, who headed the McCann Team’s private investigations in 2007 and in 2008, had comprehensively lied about the numbers of people he had on his investigation team, and what they were really employed to do. I have attached a translation of the relevant chapter for your information.

6. Kevin Halligen, employed as the lead McCann Team investigator from April to late August 2008, was also remanded in custody on fraud charges in October 2009 and spent four years in jail, having been found guilty of a £1 million fraud. According to a lengthy and well-researched article by Mark Hollingsworth in the Evening Standard in August 2009, Halligen did little or no practical work of value in the hunt for Madeleine but instead squandered most of the £560,000 he was paid by the McCann Team on ‘living the high life’ in luxury hotels in the U.S., Italy and the U.K. with his then girlfriend, Shirin Trachiotis. After being on the run, wanted for fraud, he was eventually located in the £700-a-night Bank Hotel, Oxford, where he and his girlfriend were holed up.

7. The McCann Team, later, in 2009, employed two former British detectives, ex DI Dave Edgar and ex DetSgt Arthur Cowley, as their lead investigators. In August that year, Dave Edgar and the McCanns’ PR spokesman fronted a major press conference where they announced that:

(a) a British banker, who had been drinking for several hours in the bars around the port of Barcelona, had ‘agonised’ for two years but had now come forward with information that, three nights after Madeleine had been reported missing, he had been approached on Barcelona dockside at 2.00am by a young woman who said: “Have you got my new daughter?”
(b) the young woman was said to ‘look like Victoria Beckham’ and have an Australian accident, and
(c) Madeleine may have been brought by boat from Praia da Luz, Portugal, to Barcelona between 3 and 6 May 2007, and that Madeleine may have been with the woman on a large yacht that had sailed to Australia the next day.

This press conference received huge coverage in the British TV and print media.

However, a lengthy report by Tom Worden, Martin Delgado and Andrew Chapman in the Mail on Sunday on 15 August 2009 drew attention to multiple problems with the entire basis of story, which was much-hyped in the British mainstream media. Here are some extracts from the Mail’s report, which was headed: “Why did Madeleine McCann detectives ask so few questions?”:

“Private detectives leading the hunt for Madeleine McCann faced questions last night after a Mail on Sunday investigation revealed apparent shortcomings in chasing a 'strong lead'. The detectives failed to make even rudimentary inquiries before announcing a 'significant’ development in the worldwide search for the six-year-old.’

“At a Press conference in London, lead investigator David Edgar appealed for help in finding a 'bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike'…Mr Edgar, 52, told the 50 journalists from several countries: ‘It's a strong lead. Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by this point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant’

“The Mail on Sunday, however, has established that members of Mr Edgar's team who had visited Barcelona:

* Failed to speak to anyone working at the seafood restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen at 2am.

* 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.

* Failed to ask British diplomats in Spain for advice before or during the visit.

“Also, Spanish police could not confirm that they had been contacted by the British investigators. Last night Mr Edgar 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'.

“The Mail on Sunday's inquiry by a Spanish-speaking reporter in Barcelona last week has exposed worrying gaps in the British detectives' strategy, including failure to question several people who might have vital information. Barcelona port director Joan Guitart said: 'Nobody has been here asking questions about Madeleine or this Australian woman. This is the first I have heard about any possible link to the port’. A source at the British Embassy in Madrid said: 'The detectives did not inform us or the consulate in Barcelona that they were coming to Spain, nor request any assistance in their investigation’. A Barcelona-based private detective with more than 20 years' experience of missing persons cases said: 'I cannot understand why the Madeleine detectives would have released this story and e-fit to the public without first making their own investigation in the port. It beggars belief that they did not even speak to the owner of the restaurant or the port authorities’.

Understandably, there were many who suggested that this story had been manufactured simply in order to provide another opportunity for another set of headlines about Madeleine and was never a realistic lead. It raised stil more legitimate questions about the activities of the McCann Team’s private investigators.

F. The conduct of Operation Grange: contradictory statements and actions about what happened to Madeleine

Operation Grange’s conduct of this case has been marked by a number of both obtuse and baffling statements and actions about what has happened to Madeleine.

Early on, in a TV interview in 2012, DCI Redwood offered the comment that “Madeleine may be alive…or she may be dead”.

In 2014, Operation Grange mounted a huge operation to search either two or three (both were stated) waste ground sites in Praia da Luz. The search was deliberately conducted in the full glare of publicity, with camera teams from many countries covering the search. There were British police officers with pickaxes, augers and forensic bags combing the ground, whilst a phalanx of Portuguese Police officers looked on and guarded the site. It was clear that - despite the Portuguese Police having thoroughly searched these sites many years ago – Operation Grange were looking for forensic evidence of a dead body.

In addition, Operation Grange officers searched the village from a Portuguese military helicopter, a top-of-the-range Mark III Alouette. The Portuguese Police issued a statement that the British police would have to meet the costs of hiring the helicopter, guarding the site, and also the expense of acting as ‘Rogatory Interviewers’ and translators of interviews with no fewer than 11 suspects who were summoned for interviews under caution in 2014.

Soon after these events, DCI Redwood was quoted as saying that ‘Madeleine may have been dead before she left the apartment’. This obtuse and baffling statement could have meant a number of things, but most people assumed that DCI Redwood was inferring that the abductor murdered Madeleine in the apartment, carried her out, and hid her body somewhere.

Redwood had already committed himself on BBC Crimewatch to saying that a man seen by the Irish family was (and still is) his chief suspect. Thus, taking all his statements together, it became clear that his hypothesis was that a man had killed and removed Madeleine from her apartment and was still carrying her dead body through the streets of Praia da Luz about half a mile away, several minutes later, heading towards the beach.

However, despite all the above, the new Senior Investigating Officer in the case, Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, called a hasty press conference on Monday 18 April this year in which he was reported, in all the following day’s mainstream newspapers (Tuesday 19 April) as saying that Operation Grange was now pursing ‘reasonable lines of enquiry’ which suggested that Madeleine ‘may still be alive’.

It was only later that day that the reason for this sudden proclamation that Madeleine may be alive became clear. On the morning of that very day, it became public that Dr Goncalo Amaral, the original investigation co-ordinator in the case, had succeeded in obtaining a unanimous verdict of three Portuguese Court of Appeal judges who upheld his appeal and over-turned a lower court verdict that his book, ‘The Truth About A Lie’, was libellous. The Appeal Court ruled that it was not libellous and said that under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – ‘Freedom of Expression’ – he was perfectly entitled to publish his conclusions on the case. The Court also ruled that the McCanns would have to pay the entire costs of their seven-year legal fight against Dr Amaral, amounting to an estimated £500,000.

The question arises as to whether the Met Police press conference last Monday (18 April) helped in any way to further the Met Police’s investigation. Manifestly it did not. The only reasonable inference to be drawn by the Met Police’s conduct is that the press conference was arranged, once again, to influence public perception, and to counteract what they knew in advance would be adverse publicity the following day when the Portuguese Court of Appeal verdict in the case of McCanns v Amaral became known.

G. The conduct of Operation Grange – A procession of statements and leaks about very unlikely suspects

Entirely contrary to normal police practice, Scotland Yard have repeatedly made statements about improbable suspects. In addition, there were ‘leaks’ of even more improbable suspects, which news media claimed were sourced from Scotland Yard but never denied. Just to list some of these illustrate the extraordinary procession of unlikely suspects:
* ‘We have 38 persons of interest, 12 of whom are British’‘A burglar in the McCanns’ apartment who was disturbed when Madeleine woke up – a burglary gone wrong’
* ‘A tractor-driver from the Cape Verde Islands who is now dead’
* ‘A man from the Ocean Club who had a spare set of keys’
* ‘A man who smelt of rubbish bins who was trying to access the apartments of British families’ ‘Six British men seen driving a white van’
* ‘It may have been one of 650 registered sex offenders whose records we are checking’
* ‘We will be interviewing 11 suspects under caution and asking them 254 prepared written questions, including ‘Did you kill Madeleine McCann?’

Quite apart from this plethora of unlikely suspects, in some cases the identifying of possible suspects in this highly irregular fashion could have alerted any person responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance and caused him/her to ‘go to ground’. That is irresponsible police conduct and once again cries out for a rational explanation.

H. The conduct of Operation Grange: The visit of Alison Saunders, now the Director of Prosecutions, to Portugal in 2013

On 21 June 2013, the Guardian (along with other newspapers) reported that:

“Alison Saunders, the Senior Crown Prosecutor for London, and her colleague Jenny Hopkins, Head of the Complex Casework Unit, discussed new leads in the inquiry with their Portuguese counterparts…

“The Met began a review into the case - funded by the Home Office - after Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, appealed to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, for help. The Portuguese investigation was closed in 2008 and there have been repeated discussions between the British and Portuguese authorities with a view to reopening the inquiry. So far the Portuguese have refused to do so, saying concrete new evidence would be required…”

It is far from clear what the high profile visit of these two top CPS officers achieved, if anything. There has been no prosecution of anybody. Any report on Operation Grange should be able to explain in clear terms what was the purpose of sending these two high-ranking CPS officers to Portugal.

I. The conduct of Operation Grange: The obsessive re-publication of endless statistics

One of the features of Operation Grange over the past five years has been the repetitive procession of statistics about the amount of work they have carried out. The latest such occasion was in October 2015 when they announced the following statistics:

- The inquiry took 1,338 statements

- The inquiry collected 1,027 exhibits

- Officers investigated more than 60 persons of interest.

- A total of 650 sex offenders were considered

- Reports of 8,685 potential sightings of Madeleine around the world were followed up

- 7,154 actions were raised

- 560 lines of inquiry were identified, and

- More than 30 requests were made to countries across the world asking for work to be undertaken on behalf of the Met.

In addition to the above list, Operation Grange has also informed us previously that they:

- Searched the mobile ’phone records of over 11,000 mobile ’phone users across 30 countries

- Travelled to Portugal over 30 times

- Interviewed 11 named suspects under caution, and

- Served several ‘Rogatory Requests’ on the Portuguese Police.


On the face of it, that looks like a very comprehensive and thorough piece of work. Yet, so far as can be ascertained, all of this prodigious level of activity has not brought us one jot nearer finding out what really happened to Madeleine McCann.

According to the files released in July 2008 by the Portuguese Police, there was no forensic trace of an abductor having been in the McCanns’ apartment. A finger-print was found on the window of the apartment, but it was that of Kate McCann. No-one heard or saw the abduction taking place. The person thought to have been the abductor turns out, so DCI Redwood told 6.7 million people on Crimewatch, to have been a man using the night creche on the night Madeleine was reported missing, who hadn’t bothered for six years to tell any police force that he might have been the person seen by Jane Tanner.

The only other evidence of Madeleine being abducted, apart from the McCanns’ evidence, is that of the controversial alleged sighting by an Irish family at 10.00pm that night. The Met Police admitted in answer to a Freedom of Information request in 2015 - eight years after this alleged sighting - that they had still not identified this man.

The question arises as to whether the massive amount of money, time and effort (5 years and around £14 million to date) was in the remotest degree proportional to the vast amount of effort expended. Any Home Office report should inform the public on what basis the Review and then the formal Investigation was ever thought to have a reasonable prospect of success in finding out what happened to Madeleine.

Nine years on, do we know who took her? - No. Do we know where she has been taken? – No. So what exactly, in real terms, has been achieved by Operation Grange? Can we please be told? The taxpayer has funded this.

J. The conduct of Operation Grange – Other matters

Certain other matters ought to be covered in any report for the public on Operation Grange.

One is the frequently-made claim that the Operation Grange team were working ‘in close collaboration’ with their opposite numbers in Portugal. This has been flatly contradicted in many well-sourced newspaper reports in the U.K. and Portugal. One of these spoke of ‘open warfare’ between the two police forces. There has never been an tangible evidence of any ongoing Portuguese Police investigation after the case was shelved in July 2008. All the indications are that the British presence in Portugal was barely tolerated, at best, by the relevant Portuguese authorities.

The team’s justification for, reportedly, staying at some of Portugal’s top 5-star and 4-star hotels is another matter on which many members of the public require an explanation.

In addition, the Met Police allowed frequent press reports to appear promising ‘imminent arrests’. These were not denied by Operation Grange. Yet there have never been any arrests. Why did the Met allow these excitable stories to be published without any correction? – as it appears they were all untrue.

K. Questions about the involvement of the British government and the security services in the Madeleine McCann case

The petition preamble asked that any Home Office report “should cover the role of the government, the security services & UK police forces”.

Many people have, understandably, questioned the enormous scale of government and security service involvement in this case. A convincing answer has not yet been forthcoming. Amongst the unusual amount of such involvement have been the following issues:

Which government and other agencies formed part of the secret government task group convened under the leadership of Matt Baggott, then Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police force, on 8 May 2007, just five days after Madeleine was reported missing. A Freedom of Information request seeking information about which agencies and persons were represented on that committee was refused. Why was that? What is so secretive about the identities of those persons employed at the taxpayer’s expense to help find out what really happened to Madeleine McCanns?

Why was an unusually high level of ambassadorial and consular assistance given to the McCanns from the very first day, wholly disproportionate to that given in any other similar ‘missing child’ case?

Why, within days of Madeleine being reported missing, did the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, send the Director of his 40-strong Media Monitoring Unit at the Central Office of Information, to act as a full-time Public Relations Office for the McCanns, a role he is still required to perform today?

Why was Special Branch involved, e.g. to convey the McCanns to their home after they returned to England having just been declared formal suspects in the case? Kate McCann wrote on page 259 of her book, ‘madeleine’: 0“A Special Branch Officer drove us to Rothley”. What was the full extent of Special Branch’s involvement, and why was it necessary?

There are several references in the case to MI5 being involved in the case. Again, why were they involved, and to what extent?

In particular, MI5 staff confronted one potentially very significant witness in the case, namely Mr Martin Grime, the top British sniffer dog handler, whose two dogs, Eddie and Keela, alerted to ‘cadaver scent contaminant’, blood and body fluids in 17 locations associated with the McCanns in Praia da Luz. On his return from his mission with his dogs in Portugal in August 2007, Martin Grime reported to Dr Amaral, the investigation co-ordinator, that on his return to England, he had been stopped and questioned by two MI5 officers at Faro Airport. Credible sources since then suggest that Martin Grime was prevailed on by the two MI5 officers to ‘tone down’ his evidence when submitting his final report. [I note here that the McCanns (a) deny that the dogs alerted to cadaver scent contaminant, body fluids and blood, (b) maintain that without corroborative forensic evidence Mr Grime’s report cannot be used as evidence in a court of law, and (c) note that the DNA evidence, whilst revealing that the blood and body fluids could have come from Madeleine, did not amount to proof that they did].

The three ‘private detectives’ who worked for the McCanns under the umbrella of ‘Oakley International’ in 2008 – Kevin Halligen, Henri Exton and Tim Craig-Harvey – all had significant and recent experience working closely with the government and/or the security services. Halligen, who was jailed for four years from 2009 to 2013, had worked closely with the Ministry of Defence on lithium batteries. Henri Exton had been the former Head of Covert Intelligence for MI5. Tim Craig-Harvey also had connections with the security services. Was the government, and the secret committee set up under the chairmanship of the Chief Constable of Leicestershire, Matt Baggott, on 8 May 2007, aware of or involved in their appointment?

The government is closely linked to the risk and security assessment company, Control Risks Group, which was dispatched to Praia da Luz in the days immediately following Madeleine being reported missing. Was the government involved in sending Control Risks Group and, whether they were or not, did the government help to fund the involvement of Control Risks Group?

Gerry McCann spoke of several personal calls he made to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Later, Gordon Brown was reported to have leaned heavily on the Portuguese Police to release a description of a man allegedly seen by the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner, at 9.15pm pm on 3 May 2007 (whom Operation Grange has subsequently identified as an innocent man whose child was at the night creche that evening). Gordon Brown, as Prime Minster from June 2007, subsequently personally discussed the Madeleine McCann case with Portuguese President Jose Socrates (now on remand in custody facing serious corruption charges) on at least two occasions. There was also evidence that Gordon Brown was regularly in touch with the Portuguese government demanding the sacking of the Madeleine McCann investigation co-ordinator, Goncalo Amaral, and was told beforehand that, on 2 October 2007, he would indeed be removed from his post. Any report should fully explain the great extent of his personal involvement in this matter.

Many people want answers to these and other questions.

Colleagues and I have in the past have called, and still do, for a full public enquiry to be held, with the power to summon witnesses, into all aspects of the investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Nevertheless, this petition confines itself to a need for a report to the public on the performance of Operation Grange and related matters.

I and the other 3,110 people who have signed the petition trust that you will be able to order the Home Office to prepare a full report on the work of Operation Grange and the involvement of the government, the security services and various British police forces, over a period of nearly nine years, during which time there has apparently been little or no progress towards understanding what really happened to her.

Yours sincerely

Anthony Bennett


Enclosure:

APPENDIX: ‘THE SMOKESCREEN’ by Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit
(August 2014, ISBN 978-84-941649-8-9) - CHAPTER 13: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ‘LOS CAGOTS’: OUR WORK FOR METODO 3 - Translation commissioned by the Madeleine Foundation, February 2016

‘THE SMOKESCREEN’ by Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit

(August 2014, ISBN 978-84-941649-8-9)



CHAPTER 13: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ‘LOS CAGOTS’:
OUR WORK FOR METODO 3
Translation commissioned by the Madeleine Foundation, February 2016


The first part of this chapter is written by Antonio Tamarit; the second part by Julian Peribanez
Antonio Tamarit:
Our involvement in the case of a little girl called Madeleine McCann began during October 2007 in the city of Tangiers, Morocco, where I was on location for business reasons. It is a place with which I am well acquainted. Performing work such as mine at that location is no easy task.
Whilst I was there, Francisco Marco rang me from Barcelona, instructing me to establish contact in Tangiers Airport with some people from Control Risks, London, who wanted to speak to me about a little English girl who had disappeared in Portugal, and to hear what they had to say.
I met Brian Kennedy at the airport, accompanied by his son Patrick. The former was not connected to Control Risks, London, but was instead a patron who was helping the little girl’s parents to discover her whereabouts.
Our conversation focused on the common elements of the youngster’s disappearance. I made a few general comments on the basis of what I had read in the press (by this point in time, the only scenario I could envisage was finding a body, although I did not say that), and the conclusion that I drew from this first chat was that my conversation partners were very religious, as I myself am.
They were both convinced that the little girl was alive and that someone had abducted her. We got on well together. All three of us are keen on rugby and Brian Kennedy even has his own team (yes, that’s what he told us, that he had his own team). I commented that a complex case such as this requires in-depth research in order to be able to analyse all aspects.
We agreed to meet again in Manchester, Brian having already taken it as agreed that we would be contracted. When I enquired about their flight number for their return journey to England, they pointed to a private jet standing on the runway. I jovially commented that they don’t have a hard life, after which we said goodbye.
I subsequently rang Francisco Marco in Barcelona to inform him of our agreement and I suggested that he refrain from involving the press, as was his usual practice, and that instead we should simply get on with our work quietly, so that he could enjoy his moment of glory when we actually made a discovery.
As the whole world is now aware, there has never been a single moment of glory in the Madeleine McCann case; however, it has occupied many hours of time on the television and radio as the centre of attention, packed with lies, and hundreds of pages in daily newspapers, magazines and on websites, containing many untruths.
For the above reasons, my relationship (and likewise that of the other serious employees of the company) with Marco was seriously damaged.
From that moment on, which took place as I was at Tangiers Airport, I was relegated to the sidelines. Marita Fernández and José Luis Marco Llavina travelled to Manchester; these were Francisco Marco’s mother, who had not carried out any investigative work for many years, and her nephew, the company’s accountant. This was all symptomatic of the plans they were setting up at poor Madeleine’s expense.
The aunt and nephew team returned from Manchester in heroic style. They made a big point of emphasising that where this operation was concerned they were not motivated by money; however, in reality they ended up making a fortune by means of deception and dishonest trickery.
I was sent to Portugal on two occasions, just to make up the numbers, because in theory a whole army of Método 3 detectives were supposed to be working in Portugal. The reality of the situation was very different. Nobody from Método 3 was actually working there except Julián Peribañez, who was burning the midnight oil in an attempt to solve the case, and Elisenda Villena, for several months.
They sent me to Marrakech because, according to what I was told, there was a witness there. The witness turned out to be a French woman who assured me that the missing girl was in the Rif Mountains. When I asked her how she knew that - and whether she had seen her - she replied that she knew two clairvoyants, one in France and one in Morocco, and that both had informed her that Madeleine was in the Rif Mountains.
As the witness was unable to provide any further details, and just in case the clairvoyants’ predictions came up with any results, I proceeded to scour the country from top to bottom in my capacity as a member of the Método 3 army of investigators deployed to Morocco to solve the Madeleine case, travelling to Tangiers, Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir, Fez, Uarzazat, Uchda, Nador and any other places you may care to add. Needless to say, the little girl failed to appear.
After I had left Método 3, I began to realise to what extent the company was swindling the fund which had been set up and which was supported by hundreds of unsuspecting people whose sole objective was to find Madeleine. Nothing special, just inflated expenses, invented items and false invoices, etc. Who were the beneficiaries of this dishonesty?
Needless to say, the usual suspects: Francisco Marco, Marita Fernández and his cousin José Luis Marco Llavina.

Julian Peribanez:
And there is more besides that about Portugal, relating to frauds, the hotline and Brian Kennedy’s extraordinary reaction when we explained to him that they had been defrauded.
The Madeleine case was yet another outrage bearing the unmistakable hallmark of Método 3. Now it’s my turn to tell you about it. Método 3 became involved in the search for Madeleine McCann in October 2007.
Although there had been some talk of my accompanying Marita Fernández to the interview, in the end Marita went with Jose Luis Marco Llavina to meet Madeleine’s parents, Gerry and Kate McCann. I have no idea why, but the interview between the Método 3 representatives and Madeleine’s parents was recorded, which was not normal practice. I had an opportunity to listen to the recording. From that point on, Madeleine’s parents were relegated to the background and conversations were led directly by Brian Kennedy.
It was decided that the search for Madeleine was to take place in two countries: Portugal and Morocco (yes, Portugal and Morocco). My reason for emphasising that is because you may have read that the search took place in other places; however, that was a complete fabrication.
Antonio Tamarit trudged all over Morocco during a search the nature of which was both bizarre and insane. Where Portugal was concerned, Elisenda Villena and I were responsible for making the appropriate enquiries at the outset; however, after several months I found myself carrying out this task practically single handed.
In terms of the investigation, which lasted approximately eight months, we only received very sporadic assistance from Antonio Tamarit and Gerard Acereda. Indeed, their back-up was so sporadic that this only took place on a couple of occasions. Francisco Marco had tasked the latter of the two with locating a suspect who did not even exist. The purpose of Antonio Tamarit and Gerard Acereda’s visit to Portugal was to hide from Brian Kennedy (who had meanwhile suddenly left the United Kingdom and relocated to Praia de Luz in order to check first-hand on the progress of the search and rescue operations) the ‘empty shell’ nature of the supposed ‘twenty-man team’ from Método 3 which Francisco Marco had stated were dedicated to the search for the little girl in that area.
I wish to emphasise here again how shocking this was, so that it will not be overlooked: Francisco Marco, whenever asked, always replied that Método 3 had deployed ‘twenty men’ to investigate Madeleine’s disappearance! That was yet another lie.
This was the tactic used by Francisco Marco to inflate Método 3’s invoices to the client and it also gave him an opportunity to brag to the numerous journalists who were keen to report on the Madeleine case, as he was their point of reference.
I began in Portugal by following up various leads and then, by virtue of my good knowledge of English, I attended the offices of the Latium group in Wilmslow, Cheshire, in England where I met its owner, Brian Kennedy, lawyer Edward Smethurst, Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate McCann and cousins Francisco Marco and José Luis Marco in their capacity as the representatives, at the highest possible level, of Método 3.
The meeting, which had been arranged in order to outline the strategic plan and the investigative lines being pursued to locate the little girl, was also attended by another lawyer who was a former police officer, whose name I cannot recall. During the meeting, at the point when Francisco Marco addressed me. saying, “Stand up and talk, Julián, that is the only reason for your attendance here,” I realised that I had been sent to Wilmslow simply in order to deflect attention away from the fact that Francisco Marco’s English skills left a lot to be desired, which meant that he was incapable of describing in an intelligible manner the actions being taken to find the missing girl.
The presentation was laboured but it went reasonably well. There were some difficult moments when we had to take breaks.
One such example was when the possibility was raised that Madeleine could have been abducted by a paedophile network. The parents remained stoical when this scenario was considered, although they were unable to stop their eyes from filling with tears. We had to stop at that point because their heartbreak was upsetting us all.
After the meeting had ended, the participants all went to Brian Kennedy’s home for supper. There, I was struck by how both our host and Madeleine’s parents were lovely people, and I was able to deduce, without any reservations whatsoever, that as far as that operation was concerned Francisco Marco had no particular interest in finding Madeleine. I made that deduction when during an aside, he asked me, “Do you realise how much an advertising campaign like this for Método 3 would cost me?”
Before I had a chance to reply, he answered his own question, “At least two million Eeros!” An advertising campaign costing him next to nothing, which was barely the cost of setting up the Madeleine McCann telephone line - the famous hotline no. 902 300 213 - the purpose of which was for people to ring in with information leading us to the little girl’s whereabouts.
Headlines in the media stated that a mechanism had been set up whereby operators would answer calls in Spanish, English, French, Italian, Arabic and Portuguese. However, this consisted in reality of a switchboard which redirected calls to our office, where Método 3’s employees, including myself, answered them. Before going on to describe the nature of the calls we received, I should mention that our understanding of English, French, Italian, Arabic and Portuguese certainly left room for improvement. In any event, the linguistic element was of no consequence, given that no relevant information was lost.
Fortune tellers (Spanish playing card and Tarot readers), necromancers, palmists, individuals who had had dreams but did not know what they were about, followed by others who offered interpretations of those dreams. In short, pure esotericism and complete time-wasting, all of which was the result of Francisco Marco’s bright and unique ideas about how to find little Madeleine.
After that, the genie having by now run out of ideas, he returned to his lamp, not without failing, however, to make frequent appearances in the media circus, where both he and his mother shone like bright lights. They were the king and queen of the trapeze.
The daily newspaper El Mundo on 25th November 2007 quoted Francisco, who was overwhelmed by his stardom, as saying, “The pressure is immense. I have a waiting list for 60 interviews with media from all over the world - and in the mornings, when I go to take my breakfast in the bar, I also come up against some English reporter or other who wants me to divulge information.”
Then, Marita Fernández had the absolute audacity to state that “half a dozen translators are responsible for answering calls in their own language, whether French, English, Portuguese, Arabic, etc. … Each conversation is recorded in a file and every piece of information is cross-checked with the others.”
When the journalist asked whether they were doing all this work for financial money reasons, the reply was: “We’re talking about five-figure sums and no more, and almost the whole of that amount is to cover the travel expenses to the countries where we have been working. The 20-strong team who are working exclusively on this case are all on our payroll, and our fees are practically symbolic. Madeleine is our only client.”
Both mother and son were trained in how to answer questions of this sort. On the back page of La Vanguardia dated 1st November 2007, at the time when rumours were circulating about whether Madeleine’s disappearance was simply a money-making hoax, the journalist Victor M. Amela asked Marco what was the basis of his belief. The latter replied, “Our experts spent ten hours interviewing the McCanns, which was sufficient time for them to ascertain whether they were deceiving us. My specialists have assured me that they are not hiding anything at all, and that is why we have decided to help them.”
He omitted to tell the journalist that his specialists were his mother and his cousin; he must have thought there was no need to mention this. Alternatively, he may have thought that the journalist had realised that his cousin was the chief financial officer (meaning the accountant) of Método 3 and that his mother was just a woman who didn’t even hold a driving licence and had been a secretary at a detective agency and who was involved in sales for the agency and not investigative work.
When asked what amount of money was being charged for the search for Madeleine, Francisco Marco replied, “Expenses plus a figure which is symbolic rather than high.” In answer to a question about how many cases of missing persons they investigated each year, he replied insistently, “We specialise in business fraud but we also locate approximately 300 persons per year.”
And now here is my attempt at solving a ‘rule of three’. If Francisco Marco’s agency turned over approximately a thousand cases each year and each missing person is one case, then what percentage of the trading account of Francisco Marco’s agency related to missing persons? And if I were to complicate the rule of three a little further, it would be interesting to know how many Método 3 employees were responsible for finding missing persons, given that during the six years I spent with the company I only dealt with two cases, which to my great pride I solved; these kinds of cases are the most rewarding within the profession.
Where Madeleine’s case was concerned, Francisco Marco answered the journalist from La Vanguardia with maximum audacity by stating that his agency had “about 40 people here and in Morocco”. To avoid repetition, I will avoid making any further comments, other than to say that I wish he had been struck dead when, upon being asked how he foresaw the ending of the Madeleine case, he said that he would “give Madeleine her dolls, calm her down, remove her from the place where she was, ring her parents and put her on the phone.”
The way in which things were turning out, Madeleine’s case would have to be closed. Brian Kennedy grew tired of trying to achieve the impossible, and of paying. Francisco Marco and José Luis Marco arranged to meet me at the Petit Paris Restaurant, which no longer exists as it was forced to close by customers who went there for meals on company accounts which were never settled.
Método 3’s name appeared on the list of clients who were in default because they had failed to pay a 3,000 Euro debt, as the accountant of Método 3 himself would have described it. He was the person who dealt with creditors. It was when we were inside the Petit Paris that Francisco Marco and José Luis Marco informed me that the contract with the Madeleine Fund had been terminated and that I should therefore take several days off in order to unwind. They also told me over that same meal that Brian Kennedy had suggested that I continue working on the case with him, an offer which was turned down by Francisco Marco and José Luis Marco on the grounds that I was too valuable to them. At that moment in time I was filled with pride, but the mere thought of it I now find repellent.
On 23rd November 2009 the news broke that Kevin Hallingen and Henry Exton from Oakley International had conned the Madeleine Fund out of half a million pounds. It would appear that that company had picked up where Método 3 left off.
On 13th December 2011, officers from the Policía Nacional (Spanish National Police) and Scotland Yard arrived at Método 3’s premises in order to remove documentation related to the Madeleine McCann case. I will pause for a moment here to describe the star performance in the office by Marita Fernández when she found out that the Scotland Yard officers had arrived.
As she cannot speak English, she participated in the conversation via the interpreter who had accompanied the officers, to whom she blurted out the following words only, “How are you getting on with those child sexual abuse cases of yours? How are you combating it? Because that is something which, obviously, forms an innate part of your English genetic makeup and which you carry with you …” The interpreter was absolutely astounded, yet the Método 3 director insisted that she translate these words. I ended up asking a question in order to divert the officers’ attention and rescue the interpreter from this situation.
Whilst they were there, Francisco Marco rang Mayka Navarro, the editor of El Periódico, to alert her and suggest that if she wanted to illustrate this news item, she should send a photographer and television cameras along to capture images of the British and Spanish officers leaving the premises of Metodo 3. On 14th December 2011, Francisco Marco appeared on the programme directed by Ana Rosa Quintana on Tele 5. I now reproduce a verbatim record of a significant part of the dialogue:

Ana Rosa: El Periódico de Cataluña presents an exclusive story by our colleague Mayka Navarro about the investigation of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Mayka, what are these photographs?
Mayka Navarro: Well, these photographs were taken yesterday at 3pm by our colleague Albert Bertrán from El Periódico, and in fact they show officers from Scotland Yard accompanied by officers from the National Police Agency. At that point they are leaving the Barcelona offices of the detective agency Método 3, there is the corner of the intersection of Tuset and Diagonal (streets) and they are holding boxes containing photocopies of the complete file on the disappearance of the little girl Madeleine …

Francisco Marco: I believe there are six, seven or eight very important leads in there, which were reported at the time in question, in partnership with the Spanish and Portuguese police, which the Portuguese police always dismissed without even investigating them - for the reason which has already been mentioned previously. And that was because this was a highly politicised issue and also because they did not want to act on any information which did not originate from their own sources. The only thing I would say is that on each day when one of us from Método 3 travelled to Portugal, we were followed the whole time and checked up upon continuously so that they could see what we were up to. We were never allowed to get on with our work quietly, and all the investigative work we carried out at that time outside of Portugal, and indeed some which was carried out inside Portugal itself, can be performed by Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police or else they can continue where we left off.

Mayka Navarro: Six leads, six lines, yes, yes, you were just saying…

Francisco Marco: Yes Mayka, that’s more or less it…



The reason I am recounting that incident and am able to do so in these terms is that firstly, I was present in Método 3’s premises when the officers from Scotland Yard and the National Police entered to find the documents; secondly, because I overheard the telephone call made by Marco to Mayka Navarro; thirdly, I am one of the people whose photographs were published, and fourthly, because Francisco Marco instructed me to let him know when the officers were due to leave Metodo 3’s offices so that they could be photographed (otherwise, the photographers would not have known who they were).


Don’t you agree that it is obvious how the Madeleine case was advantageous for Francisco Marco? It was so that the media provided him with a huge publicity campaign free of charge, whilst at the same time enabling him to fob off Madeleine’s Fund, an organisation funded by thousands of well-intentioned people who wanted to make their own financial contribution towards the search for the missing girl. He presented them with false invoices for travel and accommodation expenses for the 20 people who were supposed to be working in Portugal.



The procedure for accomplishing this task was simple and straightforward and no scientific methodology was required: all they had to do was obtain some El Corte Inglés travel invoices and subsequently falsify them by changing the details. These invoices can be found stored inside Método 3’s computers which were seized and are located at Barcelona Court no. 14 (Juzgado 14 de Barcelona). For the time being, they remain there by virtue of an action filed by Montserrat Turu against Francisco Marco for breach of confidentiality.
As soon as we had compiled all the relevant information and evidence to show him, we subsequently contacted Brian Kennedy during December 2013 in order to inform him of what we had found out and suggest that he should take action against the persons in Spain who were responsible for defrauding him.
I rang him during the first week of December 2013 and my conversations with both Brian and his son Patrick were relaxed and friendly. Due to financial problems and Christmas holiday dates, we had to delay meeting him until January. We contacted Brian again on 8th January 2014; he asked us to explain why we wanted to see him and we informed him of the discoveries we had made.
We explained that, as a result of the latest scandals relating to Francisco Marco and Método 3, we had carried out certain investigations of our own. In so doing we had discovered that the company had conned the Madeleine Fund by producing false invoices, and so we wanted to meet them in order to check the information with him and work out a strategy whereby they - the parents of the little girl, in whose innocence we have always believed - would not suffer any harm as a result of this intrigue, in particular from the media.
I did not receive a reply from him, although I knew he had received my email because I had requested proof of delivery. I had to send him two messages and I finally heard back from him on the 11th day of that month, when he sent a vague-sounding reply about having to go to the USA and it may therefore be better if I spoke to Ed Smethurst, his lawyer. I had to send four emails before I was able to obtain details of his lawyer, and moreover in his last reply he warned me that he would be unlikely to be willing to take any legal action against Método 3 because he had to focus upon the search for Madeleine, or at least, find out who was responsible for her abduction.

I was barely able to believe what was happening and so I wrote to Edward Smethurst, who in addition to being his lawyer was also a member of the board of directors of the Madeleine Fund. The text of his email is reproduced below:

Dear Julián,
I have just finished participating in a telephone conference with our advisors. As you are probably aware, the Metropolitan Police is currently responsible for the investigation. Therefore, the Trust (the Madeleine Fund) has decided neither to meet with, nor to discuss the investigation with, any private investigators whilst the MET (Metropolitan Police) are carrying out their investigation. We will therefore not be able to meet with you.
However, if you have any information which may assist the Trust (the Madeleine Fund) or the investigation, please feel free to send it to us by email and we would welcome this.
I was annoyed at the cold and distant tone of his reply. I simply could not understand how they could fail to be alarmed by the discovery that they had been the victims of a financial fraud and had been charged for work which was not carried out, as well as having had their hopes raised, only for it to come to nothing. Feeling let down, I wanted to find out exactly what the Madeleine Fund’s position was, and so I sent them the following email:
I understand that your position is as follows: that we wish to assist the Madeleine Fund to uncover a fraud which was perpetrated against the above Fund by a firm of private detectives, Método 3, with which the Fund had entered into a contract – and that you do not wish to hold a meeting with us - and that you will not co-operate with us in order to expose the above agency, which has stolen money destined for locating Madeleine McCann, which people around the world had donated out of the goodness of their hearts for the purpose of finding a missing girl, and which ended up lining the pockets of Método 3 as a result of false invoicing. Please would you simply let me know whether I have got this right, as I am finding it difficult to understand your position, and solely for the sake of clarity, so that I can be sure that we cannot rely upon co-operation from the Madeleine Fund in relation to this matter, and to enable us to pursue this issue in a different direction.
With best wishes
Julián


I did not receive any reply. I was therefore able to ascertain that the Madeleine Fund had surrounded itself in a wall of silence, especially when I realised that Gerry McCann, the missing girl’s father, did not even respond to the message I sent him, the content of which was similar to those I had previously addressed to Brian Kennedy and the lawyer Edward Smethurst.
In the light of this situation, I should perhaps point out the following: the Madeleine Fund is not a charity, but is in fact a limited company called “Madeleine’s Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd” based in Cannon Street in London (EC4M 6YH), with registered no. CRN 624815, office of registration 2-6. Its six directors include the aforementioned Edward Smethurst and Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of little Madeleine.
Furthermore, with the exception of the last invoices, which were processed by Brian Kennedy’s company LATIUM MANAGEMENT SERVICES, in theory Método 3’s client was not Madeleine’s Fund but was in fact Mr Brian Kennedy. Therefore, if Brian Kennedy failed to take legal action in relation to the fraud, we would not have a case, and that would be the end of the matter. Don’t you think that would be a shame?
However, rather than wallowing in displeasure, I think that it is worth examining the fact that the annual accounts presented to the press by Madeleine’s Fund clearly showed that they had allocated money from their own Fund to a team of private investigators who were searching for Madeleine, Método 3 in this instance, and that that money had originated from altruistic people whose sole intention was for Madeleine to be found.
That leaves a huge black hole which has swallowed up many thousands of Euros. In order to emerge from that hole, I would suggest that the English police, who have been tasked with solving the case, track down the only two existing copies of the fictitious invoices. Brian Kennedy has one of these copies, but he is extraordinarily disinterested in filing a lawsuit for fraud against Método 3.
The other copy is at Barcelona Court no. 14 (Juzgado de Barcelona no. 14), where the items seized from Francisco Marco remain lodged, pursuant to a court order enabling the police to proceed to search Método 3’s premises. The English police should act swiftly in order to obtain the false invoices, as if they fail to act expeditiously, Francisco Marco is sure to make sure they disappears, if the seized items are returned to him.
That would not surprise me in the least, given that this is a man who had the audacity to brag in writing that in order for Método 3 to carry out its investigation, “We have infiltrated Moroccan and French paedophile gangs” (El Método, page 452) and also speaking into Radio 4’s microphones - in a phony, humble tone - during the interview with Xantal Llavina and saying that he “felt proud to have led to the arrest of a paedophile network. I believe that anything which affects children is what propels me forward, having protected them by stopping these people, having meant that certain children will not have to suffer what many others have suffered before them; I think that is my achievement. As I also mentioned in my book, if Método 3’s entire existence had served only to lead to the arrest of that paedophile group, then I would say that its existence had been worthwhile.”
He was rather economical with the truth here, having failed to mention the following important detail: that the paedophile ring in question was busted thanks to a sickening video which a debauched paedophile provided to Método 3, telling us that Madeleine appeared in it, and also thanks to my investigation, the results of which I handed over in their entirety to Juan Carlos Ruiloba, a good friend and a member of the National Police’s Cyber-crime Unit.
In other words, Francisco Marco boasted to Xantal Llavina’s audience, taking the credit for what the person in his book The Method (El Método) described as a “liar, thief, extortionist and blackmailer” had achieved. And that was my good self!
Needless to say, the content of the video in question could be downloaded using a simple P2P and not by means of the mysterious-sounding “hidden server” which Francisco Marco pulled out of his hat in order to brag yet again that his words were the greatest.
If it is the case that the objective was to raise as much funding as possible in order to continue investigating the little girl’s disappearance, would it not have been logical to sue the company that has defrauded you? - and thus obtain additional resources?
In fact, that was what happened early on to the English tabloids, when they threatened to take legal action against them and succeeded in obtaining a settlement of a million pounds from them, a sum which was supposedly destined for the Madeleine’s Fund.
There is also the case of Goncalo Amaral, the senior Portuguese police officer in charge of the police investigation, following publication in 2008 of his book ‘The Truth of the Lie’, after he was removed from the case.
Given the above, it is surprising that they did not sue Kevin Halligen, who was the other person who conned them and is awaiting extradition to the United States for allegedly having defrauded a London company of 1.3 million pounds. (* see Notes below)
Anyone who is interested in doing so can watch on YouTube certain statements made by Francisco Marco on television, where he brags about his investigations and gives false hope to Madeleine’s family and friends. In some of these, he even goes as far as to say that he knows the identity of Madeleine’s abductor, his whereabouts and how he did it. Those videos were the ones which raised indignation worldwide and subsequently, the shaming of the profession in Spain.


[ * Notes: 1. I have corrected spelling errors, e.g. of names, in the translation 2. I am informed that Kevin Halligen was since successfully extradited to the United States and given a prison term for his crimes of fraud. ]


Signed __________________________________
Translated by Christine Rowlands
Accredited Spanish-English translator

ADDENDUM TO LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER

Tony Bennett                                                    
e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com                    

Friday 29 April 2016 (2nd letter)

Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minster
10 Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A  2AA

BY HAND

Dear Mr Cameron

re: Petition on the Prime Minister’s website to order the Home Secretary to publish a report on the Madeleine McCann Enquiry [Operation Grange] - ADDENDUM

I am submitting this Addendum to my letter in view of the extraordinary and ridiculous statements made, apparently on the record, by Operation Grange officers about what they think really happened to Madeleine McCann.

I will first set out the claims made by Operation Grange officers in three newspapers this week, the Star, the Sun and the Daily Mail.  

The Star

* Maddie McCann 'snatched in botched break-in' Cops sure they know what happened to girl

* Brit police are convinced they know what happened to Madeleine McCann – and believe they spoke to her attacker

* That theory is that the tot was snatched after disturbing burglars who had been targeting the Portuguese holiday block where she was staying

* Police believe three suspects they have been pursuing hold the key to the nine-year mystery

* The trio have already been declared arguidos – or suspects – and were interviewed at least twice.

* This remaining lead is thought to be key

* They are linked by a series of phone calls they made to each other near the McCanns’ apartment around the time she vanished

* The suspects are Jose Carlos da Silva, 30, who used to drive guests to their apartments at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz from where Madeleine vanished, drifter Ricardo Rodrigues, 24, and drug addict Paulo Ribeiro, 53.

Sun and Daily Mail

* Madeleine McCann 'was kidnapped during a botched burglary by a gang of thieves who British police have already quizzed' but are blocked from questioning again

* Madeleine McCann was snatched by a group of thieves, it has been claimed

* Police believe she disturbed them as they robbed her holiday apartment

* This is thought to be the final line of inquiry being considered by the Met

* Madeleine McCann was kidnapped by a group of thieves because she woke up while they robbed her family's holiday apartment, it has been claimed

* It is believed to centre on a group of thieves which included a 16-year-old teenager and a man who worked at the Mark Warner resort in Portugal when she disappeared in 2007.

* Phone calls raise questions about the group's actions on the night of the three-year-old's disappearance

* It's claimed they have been identified as suspects by British police, but officers are being blocked from accessing them by Portuguese cops who say no new evidence has been brought forward

* An officer told the paper: 'It has dogged the investigation all the way through and it's happening again. If we can't question the three suspects again the trail goes cold and the case will be shelved'

* When they were previously interviewed, the men admitted theft from apartments at the complex but denied any involvement in the youngster's disappearance.


In my first letter to you, in Section G, I referred to one of the criticisms of Operation Grange being its ‘procession of unlikely suspects’ which had been  paraded by Operation Grange at regular intervals in the British press.

One only has to give very brief thought to this latest bizarre claim by Operation Grange to see the extreme improbability of their claims. These are some of the most obvious problems with their tale:

1. Why would a team of three burglars raid that particular apartment, with the McCann and their friends regularly checking it?

2. Why did no-one else see or hear this team of burglars raiding the apartment and carrying away a child who – if she woke up and ‘disturbed’ the burglars – was presumably awake, struggling and probably screaming?

3. Does Scotland Yard have any forensic evidence whatsoever from the McCanns’ apartment linking any of these three men to their alleged presence in that apartment that night? – No forensic evidence of an intruder has ever been found

4. Did these alleged burglars actually steal anything from the apartment? The McCanns said nothing was missing from their apartment apart from Madeleine

5 Why on earth would any burglar, raiding an apartment which was in the dark, carry away a three-year-old child who woke up, instead of just making haste and making off?

6. Does the description of any of the three men match the man who was DCI Andy Redwood’s chief suspect – and ‘the centre of our focus’ - on the BBC Crimewatch McCann Special transmitted on 14 October 2013?

7. What other evidence is there of the alleged activity of these three men on the night in question, apart from their making ’phone calls to each other?

8. Is it seriously claimed by Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, other senior officers of the Met, and the entire Operation Grange team, that the Portuguese Police have been furnished by Operation Grange with overwhelming evidence of the guilt of these three Portuguese men’s guilt, and yet have failed to bring charges against them?  Is it not far, far more likely that the Portuguese Police can see this for what it really is - an utterly pathetic bogus claim and boast by Scotland Yard that they have ‘found’ those responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance - and are seeking, as they have done throughout, to blame the Portuguese authorities  for the failure to identify the person or persons really responsible.

You are the proud Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Can you honestly be associated with, and satisfied with, this outcome of an investigation which you personally set up, at Rebekah Brooks’ request, and has taken five years and cost around £14 million – to end up with this farcical claim by Operation Grange?


Yours sincerely


Anthony Bennett