Re: Please note: the Fund is not a Charity.

by Ribisl 11.05.12 13:28

findmadeleine.com still has three objects as they were before the alteration in December 2011, including 'To provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine's family'.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Their index page goes straight to an appeal page with the age-progression photo and Operation Grange's contact details.

[img][You must be registered and logged in to see this link.][/img]

by pauline 11.05.12 13:40

Hilarious (in a black humour kind of way) that they have updated the website with the new picture, written about their feelings on the 5th anniversary but do not change the website to reflect the changes to the company objectives as filed in Companies House. Especially odd as the removal of the objective about financial support for the family could be promoted as being a positive change, to show their bona fides as it were....!

by **tigger** 11.05.12 13:54

pauline wrote:Hilarious (in a black humour kind of way) that they have updated the website with the new picture, written about their feelings on the 5th anniversary but do not change the website to reflect the changes to the company objectives as filed in Companies House. Especially odd as the removal of the objective about financial support for the family could be promoted as being a positive change, to show their bona fides as it were....!

If they're still paying over 30.000 a year to manage the website, they're not getting value for money!
But as you said earlier, the change doesn't mean much anyway, they more or less have a free hand as to how the money is to be spent.

by Ribisl 11.05.12 16:45

Maybe I didn't make this very clear but [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] now goes directly to a newly created page with links to Operational Grange, showing how much the SY are implicated in the McCanns' agenda.

by Guest 11.05.12 16:51

Ribisl wrote:Maybe I didn't make this very clear but [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] now goes directly to a newly created page with links to Operational Grange, showing how much the SY are implicated in the McCanns' agenda.

OR they have been told to do this by SY ensuring all information goes to them.

by Ribisl 11.05.12 16:53

candyfloss wrote:
Ribisl wrote:Maybe I didn't make this very clear but [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] now goes directly to a newly created page with links to Operational Grange, showing how much the SY are implicated in the McCanns' agenda.

OR they have been told to do this by SY ensuring all information goes to them.

Yes, that could indeed be the case too.

by tuom 11.05.12 23:23

Ribisl wrote:
candyfloss wrote:
Ribisl wrote:Maybe I didn't make this very clear but [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] now goes directly to a newly created page with links to Operational Grange, showing how much the SY are implicated in the McCanns' agenda.

OR they have been told to do this by SY ensuring all information goes to them.

Yes, that could indeed be the case too.

Sorry to sound like a dummy here , but , could you explain the above to me please ? does this mean that SY are in control of the FM website or is it virsa versa , I am not gone from the forum , I am locked away reading the case files [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] I surface once or twice a day on here to try and keep up [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

by **tigger** 12.05.12 6:29

From: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

-- it really is time for it to be publicly made clear that this 'fund' is not a charity or a search fund for a missing child - it is the McCanns own company, their own business! Like any other business, it needs to make money. However, it is a business that is being used for other means including costs in their many legal battles. Thanks to the McCanns, legal eagles such as Carter Ruck, Isabel Duarte, Rogerio Alves and many more have become a household name. All these lawyers employed in the UK and Portugal, yet the McCanns only employ one private investigator, Dave Edgar.
Unquote

Why are the McCanns still employing a PR person - why indeed have they ever needed to employ such a person? It appears the only person employed by them at the present time. Dave Edgar having recently left.
From September 2007 Clarence Mitchell was working for the McCanns at a salary of 75.000 a year. Which seems very little if one takes his previous job in account, where he was in charge of 20 staff and must surely have earned more than the average plumber.

by friedtomatoes 12.05.12 23:19

candyfloss wrote:
Ribisl wrote:Maybe I didn't make this very clear but [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] now goes directly to a newly created page with links to Operational Grange, showing how much the SY are implicated in the McCanns' agenda.

OR they have been told to do this by SY ensuring all information goes to them.

Probably I would think. As for SY endorsing money raising by the Mccanns I dont think so. They haveno Pis working for them, I guess thry might have to pay for a spokesman or pay their OFM facebook webmaster, campaign coordinator etc, Kates wages, but none of that has ever had any iota of success, ergo a waste of money

by jd 15.05.12 2:05

From 'The Truth Of the Lie' - Chapter 19

"During a more relaxed moment at one of these meetings, I come out with an ill-judged comment. Inopportune or undiplomatic, but this is my reasoning: thinking about the kinds of crime that may have been committed if the McCanns were involved in their daughter's disappearance, something occurs to me. If they were involved in one way or another, then a crime of fraud or abuse of trust is a possibility concerning the fund that was set up to finance the search for Madeleine. Donations have reached nearly 3 million Euros.

If such a crime exists, Portugal would not have jurisdiction to investigate and try it. The fund being legally registered in England, it would be our English colleagues who would deal with the case. Our English colleagues then realise a hard reality: the strong possibility that they would have a crime to investigate in their own country, with the McCann couple as the main suspects: a prospect that does not seem to appeal to them. I notice a sudden pallor in the faces of those British people present."

by friedtomatoes 15.05.12 19:56

I see the Iatest fund accounts have been lodged. Someone who has seen them has posted it made just under £.5 m losses, and turnover was c £177,000. Where is the million that was mentioned in Panorama as being donated by NI for serialisation rights of the book? Why is nothing ever clear or straightforward.
?

by Guest 15.05.12 20:00

I think that I am right in saying that the accounts for the year ending 31st March 2012 do not have to be filed until 31st December 2012.

by friedtomatoes 15.05.12 20:06

Yes Jean, thats right I think. The latest ones are filed to end March 2011 and there is mention of them being made up to 15 May 2011, by that time the book had been published, and the Sun serialisation too. But I'm no accountant, so will wait for any analysis in due course by people more qualified.

ETA, Ignore my post, these accounts have already been analysed back in February on mccannfiles.com, its not NEW.
soz

by jd 30.05.12 1:49

IT APPEARS THAT THE McCann’s CAN’T BE BOTHERED
BY ADMIN, ON DECEMBER 17TH, 2008
Originally posted on the McCann Supporter website, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The person responsible for “wheres-madeleine.info” is clearly miffed at the lack of replies to his messages to the official Madeleine Fund. No wonder – the fund is a scam, fraud and the administrators have no intention of responding to legitimate requests for information. Even the “McCann Supporters” are being duped. Here follows the article:

IT APPEARS THAT THE McCann’s CAN’T BE BOTHERED

Hello and thank you for taking the time to read this article.

This web site is paid for, designed and updated by me to aid awareness of little Maddie, I do this because I want to help in her search.

All this takes up a lot of time and of course I need to be factual in what I put on my site.

This of course can only be done by checking the information I have obtained, this then means I need verification about the information I intend to place on my site from the McCann’s themselves.

Well since my site went live on the internet it has been a constant battle to get the McCann’s web site to answer any of my mails. I have even sent a letter to there home address (No reply to this either). This lack of cooperation with me is not unique to my site; other sites that I am constantly in contact with say they do not have replies either.

Time and time again I have to send mails that go un-answered. Occasionally they do reply with the briefest as possible reply they can get away with, though this does not happen very often at all.

As my site supports them I would have thought that they would be eager to give me information that is not going to hinder there investigations ect, clearly I accept that there will be information that they could not give me but the information that I ask for is things like Photos of Maddie, or if they have any new information that might help.

Well here we go again, I found such an article on the internet and mailed them for conformation and yet again I have been greeted by utter silence, below are the dates I sent the mails of this most recent request…sent to there [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] address…

14 December 2008, 05 December 2008, 02 December 2008

I even told them that I was thinking of closing my site down because of it, which made no difference, still nothing.

I wonder if their financial backer knows how they treat their supporters! if he does not perhaps if he was to find out he might not be so eager to help.

If it was my child and people were trying to help, I would go out of my way to help provide them with as much information as I could, but this does not seem to be the way they are looking at it.

A friend of mine keeps saying to me “I do not know why you even bother, they are not interested, he then states a few reasons why he says this, but I will not state what they are here”.

So I ask you for your views, do you think I should close the site down or not, or do I carry on regardless and possibly put inaccurate information on my site as a result of it.

Please take the time to visit my guestbook and let me know your views.

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by jd 30.05.12 1:56

On September 20th, 2007, Clarence Mitchell was interviewed on Radio Live in New Zealand.

Hear the interview at this link: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Near the end of the interview Clarence says this:

I’d stress as well that the money that people have donated from around the world is only being spent on that campaign and Kate and Gerry’s legal costs and media management in the shape of me that’s all coming from the financial benefactors who are contributing quite separately so that anybody who has given money to help find Madeleine need have no fear that their money is being spent on lawyers fees or anything like that.
.....This statement is quite clear. “No money will be spent on lawyer’s fees or anything like that.” After reviewing the money spent on lawyers in the Madeleine Fund accounts, it is quite obvious that Mitchell’s statement is a bare faced lie.

Brian Kennedy Admits Madeleine Fund was for Legal Expenditure
Brian Kennedy also gave an interview at the Rothley War Memorial on May 17, 2007. This time he was eager to tell us how to donate money to the “Fund” via two banks – the Nat West and the Royal Bank of Scotland. He also told us what the money would be used for:

“Mainly for legal expenditure”

As this was the first raison d’etre for the Madeleine Fund, and confirmed nationally by one of its directors, we can conclude that the Madeleine Fund was set up to provide legal funds for the McCanns.

At no time at all did Brian Kennedy state that the money was to be used to finance the search for Madeleine.

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Comment:
Yea, if they are so innocent why do they care ? only 13% of fund money was used to search for THEIR daughter. The rest they use to sue anyone who does not believe THEIR version of lies.

by friedtomatoes 30.05.12 3:17

gerry mccann lied on tv in may 2011 when he said 2.5 million had been through the fund, it was more

he also lied when he stated in a c4 documentary that the vast majority of the money has gone directly on search fees

by Hummingbird 30.05.12 9:17

That video tells it all really.

This is supposed to be about a missing child, no one knows where she is, know one knows what on earth has happened to her. The family should be distraught, the God Parents should be distraught, everyone should look (IMO) as if they haven't slept for nights, and are starting to show the signs of stress and fatigue in their anquish over the whereabouts of a 3 (by then 4) year old beautiful little girl BUT

The Grandmother mentions how Gerry is sounding 'better in his voice'

'the fund starting has uplifted him'
'his boss has uplifted him'
all in all 'Good uplifting news'

(I began to think I'd been dreaming for the last 5 years and that Madeleine had been found, there was so much uplifting news!)

The Grandmother mentioned Madeleine - NEVER

The Godfather couldn't contain his excitement at the comment by the reporter about 'people coming all day and stuffing money in your hand'

'Oh yes' he says all big smiles 'it's very touching'

'The money will be used for all sorts of things' but then very pointedly 'probably legal expenses'

The Godfather mentions Madeleine only once and that was actually in connection with 'the Madeleine Fund' not actually about her directly.

Now why would Mr Kennedy after only 2 weeks feel the need to mention legal expenses? The child is hopefully going to be found alive and well at this point, no one has accused anyone of any wrong doing - yet. Everyone (almost) believes that she may have been abducted, no one is slandering your name in the papers or writing books about you - so what on earth are legal expenses need for?

Here we have two very close (supposedly) members of the family who are happy (over the moon in fact) to talk about the fund but NOT ONE THEM MENTIONS POOR MADELEINE!

Oh and for the record the reporter (who has never met her) mentions her name 4 times.

Absolutely disgusting, this isn't even recorded 5 years on when after crying that many tears over the years, you could be excused for now being able to talk in a more coherent manner about such a dreadful event - this was only 2 WEEKS AFTER MADELEINE DISAPPEARED!

by **Nina** 30.05.12 10:05

Hummingbird wrote:That video tells it all really.

This is supposed to be about a missing child, no one knows where she is, know one knows what on earth has happened to her. The family should be distraught, the God Parents should be distraught, everyone should look (IMO) as if they haven't slept for nights, and are starting to show the signs of stress and fatigue in their anquish over the whereabouts of a 3 (by then 4) year old beautiful little girl BUT

The Grandmother mentions how Gerry is sounding 'better in his voice'

'the fund starting has uplifted him'
'his boss has uplifted him'
all in all 'Good uplifting news'

(I began to think I'd been dreaming for the last 5 years and that Madeleine had been found, there was so much uplifting news!)

The Grandmother mentioned Madeleine - NEVER

The Godfather couldn't contain his excitement at the comment by the reporter about 'people coming all day and stuffing money in your hand'

'Oh yes' he says all big smiles 'it's very touching'

'The money will be used for all sorts of things' but then very pointedly 'probably legal expenses'

The Godfather mentions Madeleine only once and that was actually in connection with 'the Madeleine Fund' not actually about her directly.

Now why would Mr Kennedy after only 2 weeks feel the need to mention legal expenses? The child is hopefully going to be found alive and well at this point, no one has accused anyone of any wrong doing - yet. Everyone (almost) believes that she may have been abducted, no one is slandering your name in the papers or writing books about you - so what on earth are legal expenses need for?

Here we have two very close (supposedly) members of the family who are happy (over the moon in fact) to talk about the fund but NOT ONE THEM MENTIONS POOR MADELEINE!

Oh and for the record the reporter (who has never met her) mentions her name 4 times.

Absolutely disgusting, this isn't even recorded 5 years on when after crying that many tears over the years, you could be excused for now being able to talk in a more coherent manner about such a dreadful event - this was only 2 WEEKS AFTER MADELEINE DISAPPEARED!

by **tigger** 30.05.12 15:43

Great post and observations Hummingbird! Thanks - it's fantastic how much information is contained in these clips.

Yes - your point! Why did they get lawyered up so quickly? Lawyers visiting on the 11th May, allegedly lawyers suggesting a Fighting Fund - although I don't believe that for a minute. I believe there's a topic on the number of lawyers employed. I will look it up and post it.

From Enid O'Dowds' analysis (see link on page 1, post 1)

Legal Fees

A total of £180,321 has been paid (£111,522 under Merchandising and Campaign costs and £68,799 under Fund legal fees).

The cost of setting up the limited company (which did not involve acquiring charity status) could not have been more than £5,000 leaving £175,321 spent on other legal services.

What legal activities did this expenditure cover?

The Directors' Report is confusing in regard to legal fees. It states that the Fund 'has covered legal fees associated with Madeleine's abduction and the search for her...the Fund has not been used for any fees relating to their (Gerry and Kate's) legal defence.'

Why are there such apparently large legal fees associated with Madeleine's abduction? The only legal fees relating to this would be those involved with having her made a ward of court but this would not cost £175,321.

There would have been legal fees relating to the arguido status but the Directors' Report specifically states it did not pay fees relating to the McCanns' legal defence.

Director Brian Kennedy (uncle of Kate McCann) in an interview on a video made in May 2007 and available on the Internet states that the Fund money 'can be used for all sorts of reasons but probably mainly (will be used) for legal expenditure.' This seems to contradict the Directors' Report.

Thus there is great public confusion about the payment of legal costs which should be cleared up.
unquote

by Hummingbird 30.05.12 16:43

Why did they get 'lawyered up so quickly?' IMHO

GUILT

If you're not guilty you don't need lawyers.
If you're not guilty you answer all the questions the police are asking - they are trying to find your missing child for you, they need the answers
If you're not guilty you hand over everything the police ask for to assist in their search for your missing daughter
If you're not guilty you have nothing to fear from the authorities so no need to be cagey about questions -it's not 'no comment' just try a straight Yes or No!
If you're not guilty you don't need to sue anyone who says that they have other ideas about what has happened to your missing child or how it happened - you will just get on with the search for looking for her and just ignore those comments as 'nasty'
If you're not guilty you don't need to write a book to continue to tell everyone your side of the events
If you're not guilty you would agree to a lie detector test
If you're not guilty you would do a reconstruction or 2 or 3 or 4 or however many times it took to find even one iddy biddy little clue as to the whereabouts of your missing child
If you're not guilty you would MAKE your friends do the reconstruction and anyone who refused would certainly not be classed as a friend and in my mind would immediately be on my list of suspects

I could go on but I'm sure you get the idea!!

by Hummingbird 31.05.12 9:21

Here's another quote I found on the McCann Files site. Very interesting interview given on 14th May 2007, not even a fortnight after Madeleine went missing and the basis of the conversation was all about Lawyers, the fund and themsleves.

quote (GM speaking)

We have received multiple offers of different forms of help including many of financial help to help find Madeleine....

We have brought in our lawyers to help us to decide how best to use these offers of support to help us find Madeleine

Since the lawyers have come here we have visibly felt a burden being lifted from our shoulders because there's one less thing that we do not have to immediately think about and how we can co-ordinate them.

This has allowed us to concentrate more on our own physical and mental well being. We do need to spend more time at this point concentrating on ourselves, our family - who's Sean & Amalie - and contemplating about the situation we are in

unquote

Surely at this early stage all offers of support would be put towards a reward to encourage someone who knows the truth to tell it. You do not need lawyers to help you to do this, the police, the social services, the family support group could all be used for this, lawyers are for legal matters!

Since the lawyers have come we have felt a burden being lifted??????? Now what burden is that exactly?

Madeleine was mentioned only twice and that was in connection with the financial support being offered, in the last paragraph it's all about them, how they need to feel and their family who is Sean and Amalie sorry what was Madeleine then?

And what exactly does 'contemplating the situation we are in' mean!

by jd 31.05.12 11:54

Maybe this might help answer some of the questions Hummingbird. Please note this is snippets of gerry mccann words from the IBA Madrid conference (in 2008 I think).... and not what I am saying!

"I can’t say for certain what factors were influencing this intense media interest within 24 hours of her abduction. I think the fact that it was a foreign child abducted on holiday certainly played a key part. The only other case we can think of in the United Kingdom was of Ben Needham, who was abducted in 1991 on a Greek island. And we don’t know of any other cases involving British children taken whilst on holiday, so that certainly played a part. The fact that we were doctors seemed to influence things and that this had happened to professional couple and I think Madeleine’s picture herself that she was such a beautiful innocent young girl who was taken and clearly many of the journalists involved felt a great deal of empathy with us as well.

Clearly the holiday company saw this media needed to be managed and engaged Bell Pottinger straight away and they sent out their head of crisis management, Alex Woolfall, to deal with the media. They also provided to us trauma counselling, which was very, very important in how we dealt with the situation. And we had counselling sessions within 36 hours of this happening and I have to say it played a tremendous part in helping me cope with the situation and try to do things to influence the outcome. I’d like to play a video, if we can get this.

That video’s from about 9.30 pm on the 4th of May and I wanted to show it because I think even at that stage when I saw the media it filled me with dread about the potential intrusion of privacy, but I also saw it as an opportunity of helping the search, and the salient point, I haven’t seen that video for at least 18 months, and it brought back to me, the salient points of which we were trying to achieve; to get information into the investigation, which we still strive to do, as Madeleine is still missing, secondly, to let as many people as possible, know that Madeleine is missing, and thirdly, even though in that first night we were already concerned about intrusion of privacy, and I think I’ll show you in the following slides that we had very good reasons to be concerned.

So the primary objectives were to get the best possible investigation so when I put the slide up showing that we were talking about the campaign strategy, much of it was not media related, and so we had very early contact with the UK foreign office and other government officials striving to get the best possible investigation. We had to look at getting information into the enquiry and after the first few days when Madeleine was not discovered in the vicinity of the Algarve, then we had to think okay, where could she have been taken, and that influenced the decisions in which countries to visit and try and target so Spain’s a neighbouring country to Portugal, so one of the first things that we did was we got a message to David Beckham, asking him to do an appeal. He was playing for Real Madrid in this very city at the time and he agreed to that and did a very emotional appeal. And that had an amazing effect on the overall campaign because he was such a worldwide superstar and it seemed to have a snowball effect.

We took advice from the crisis management team and Alex Woolfall was absolutely brilliant. What he said to us was that for any media that you do, you must clearly define what your objective is from doing the media and secondly, ask yourself the question, how is it going to help, and that helped us tremendously with our future press conferences, statements and photo calls. We also did a number of TV and magazine interviews, I have to say, mainly at the request of the media, and that is one of the times where Alex would say you’re just feeding the beast. We subsequently had a public audience with the Pope and we had visits to Spain appealing for information and help and also we went to Germany and the Netherlands who make up the largest group of tourists to the Algarve, after the British and Irish, and we also visited Morocco which is obviously not far across the Mediterranean.

..........Within weeks we already saw that there was a focus in the media coverage. There was a switching of attention away from Madeleine and it started to become the Kate and Gerry show. There was intense pressure to do media, which I have to say would have been for media sake, which we tried to resist. And it also became clear to us that Madeleine stories were selling newspapers and that there had to be a Madeleine story and she was becoming a commodity and people were starting to forget that she was a real child.

In June 2007, after we completed our visit, we tried to signal a change in our strategy. We appointed a campaign manager and her role was not directly a spokesperson. We anticipated that the media interest would naturally dwindle and the role was really about ensuring that we could maintain a search in the long term. We also signalled that Kate and I would not be making regular press statements or conferences and we asked the media to no longer photograph our two-year-old twins. We hadn’t asked for that immediately, primarily because I just didn’t think it was enforceable, given the huge amount of media attention and particularly in another country. We might have managed it in the UK but even I doubt it there.

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by Liz Eagles 31.05.12 13:11

jd wrote:Maybe this might help answer some of the questions Hummingbird. Please note this is snippets of gerry mccann words from the IBA Madrid conference (in 2008 I think).... and not what I am saying!

"I can’t say for certain what factors were influencing this intense media interest within 24 hours of her abduction. I think the fact that it was a foreign child abducted on holiday certainly played a key part. The only other case we can think of in the United Kingdom was of Ben Needham, who was abducted in 1991 on a Greek island. And we don’t know of any other cases involving British children taken whilst on holiday, so that certainly played a part. The fact that we were doctors seemed to influence things and that this had happened to professional couple and I think Madeleine’s picture herself that she was such a beautiful innocent young girl who was taken and clearly many of the journalists involved felt a great deal of empathy with us as well.

Clearly the holiday company saw this media needed to be managed and engaged Bell Pottinger straight away and they sent out their head of crisis management, Alex Woolfall, to deal with the media. They also provided to us trauma counselling, which was very, very important in how we dealt with the situation. And we had counselling sessions within 36 hours of this happening and I have to say it played a tremendous part in helping me cope with the situation and try to do things to influence the outcome. I’d like to play a video, if we can get this.

That video’s from about 9.30 pm on the 4th of May and I wanted to show it because I think even at that stage when I saw the media it filled me with dread about the potential intrusion of privacy, but I also saw it as an opportunity of helping the search, and the salient point, I haven’t seen that video for at least 18 months, and it brought back to me, the salient points of which we were trying to achieve; to get information into the investigation, which we still strive to do, as Madeleine is still missing, secondly, to let as many people as possible, know that Madeleine is missing, and thirdly, even though in that first night we were already concerned about intrusion of privacy, and I think I’ll show you in the following slides that we had very good reasons to be concerned.

So the primary objectives were to get the best possible investigation so when I put the slide up showing that we were talking about the campaign strategy, much of it was not media related, and so we had very early contact with the UK foreign office and other government officials striving to get the best possible investigation. We had to look at getting information into the enquiry and after the first few days when Madeleine was not discovered in the vicinity of the Algarve, then we had to think okay, where could she have been taken, and that influenced the decisions in which countries to visit and try and target so Spain’s a neighbouring country to Portugal, so one of the first things that we did was we got a message to David Beckham, asking him to do an appeal. He was playing for Real Madrid in this very city at the time and he agreed to that and did a very emotional appeal. And that had an amazing effect on the overall campaign because he was such a worldwide superstar and it seemed to have a snowball effect.

We took advice from the crisis management team and Alex Woolfall was absolutely brilliant. What he said to us was that for any media that you do, you must clearly define what your objective is from doing the media and secondly, ask yourself the question, how is it going to help, and that helped us tremendously with our future press conferences, statements and photo calls. We also did a number of TV and magazine interviews, I have to say, mainly at the request of the media, and that is one of the times where Alex would say you’re just feeding the beast. We subsequently had a public audience with the Pope and we had visits to Spain appealing for information and help and also we went to Germany and the Netherlands who make up the largest group of tourists to the Algarve, after the British and Irish, and we also visited Morocco which is obviously not far across the Mediterranean.

..........Within weeks we already saw that there was a focus in the media coverage. There was a switching of attention away from Madeleine and it started to become the Kate and Gerry show. There was intense pressure to do media, which I have to say would have been for media sake, which we tried to resist. And it also became clear to us that Madeleine stories were selling newspapers and that there had to be a Madeleine story and she was becoming a commodity and people were starting to forget that she was a real child.

In June 2007, after we completed our visit, we tried to signal a change in our strategy. We appointed a campaign manager and her role was not directly a spokesperson. We anticipated that the media interest would naturally dwindle and the role was really about ensuring that we could maintain a search in the long term. We also signalled that Kate and I would not be making regular press statements or conferences and we asked the media to no longer photograph our two-year-old twins. We hadn’t asked for that immediately, primarily because I just didn’t think it was enforceable, given the huge amount of media attention and particularly in another country. We might have managed it in the UK but even I doubt it there.

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JD. That is without doubt the best post I've seen. It just about sums things up.

by **tigger** 01.06.12 9:46

Aquila posted this on the topic 'Innocence' but I thought I would copy it here too:

One innocent little girl called Madeleine disappeared through the neglectful actions of her parents by leaving her and her siblings alone in an apartment. It would not have happened if they had been present. Nevertheless it strikes the hearts of good people who chip in to help with immediate financial support for the family. These donations could have been simply sent to a high street bank but instead a fund was established within a very short space of time and a very expensive website established.
That same fund hasn't afforded a postage stamp to re-open the case. The fund has been injected with hundreds of thousands of pounds and in the five years Madeleine has been missing hasn't managed to achieve much other than to financially improve the lives of a lot of people and destroy the lives of others imo. Madeleine is still missing. The Mc's aren't happy with the Portuguese investigation and the taxpayers of UK bear the cost of an SY review. It's time to close the fund imo. If only 13% of it is actively being spent on the search for Madeleine (so it has been posted re analysis of the accounts) the other 87% is a complete waste imo.

unquote

by russiandoll 30.06.12 20:12

surprised when looking at a twitter page [ the realhumptybumpty [exposing the mccanns, uncovering the shocking truth about MM disappearance] to see a post from Ms McVey, not posting re Maddie, an innocuous post re cooking... clicked on her id and it took me to her twitter page...credible tweets considering who she is. not a fake id imo.
She is posting to this person even if not re McCanns...on a feed that is as skeptical as any I have read about the case.

Interesting...

by **tigger** 01.07.12 5:48

Hummingbird wrote:Here's another quote I found on the McCann Files site. Very interesting interview given on 14th May 2007, not even a fortnight after Madeleine went missing and the basis of the conversation was all about Lawyers, the fund and themsleves.

quote (GM speaking)

We have received multiple offers of different forms of help including many of financial help to help find Madeleine....

We have brought in our lawyers to help us to decide how best to use these offers of support to help us find Madeleine
That is an outright lie - they brought in lawyers to set up the fund in the first place - no doubt these would be the same lawyers to advise on the above
Since the lawyers have come here we have visibly felt a burden being lifted from our shoulders because there's one less thing that we do not have to immediately think about and how we can co-ordinate them. With their very own top level PR person, several people from MW to help, several sets of lawyers and apparently the whole of the FO on board - the only burden they should have noticed was the loss of their child and the urgent need to find her .

This has allowed us to concentrate more on our own physical and mental well being. We do need to spend more time at this point concentrating on ourselves, our family - who's Sean & Amalie - and contemplating about the situation we are in
not 'the situation Madeleine finds herself in' but their own situation which after all, is of their own making.
unquote

Surely at this early stage all offers of support would be put towards a reward to encourage someone who knows the truth to tell it. Quite so, it was a simple matter, a lost child needed to be found.
You do not need lawyers to help you to do this, the police, the social services, the family support group could all be used for this, lawyers are for legal matters!

Since the lawyers have come we have felt a burden being lifted??????? Now what burden is that exactly?

Madeleine was mentioned only twice and that was in connection with the financial support being offered, in the last paragraph it's all about them, how they need to feel and their family who is Sean and Amalie sorry what was Madeleine then? Madeleine seems to have always been an 'extra' - Dr. Roberts point out in his early analyses of the interviews it is 2 + 1.

And what exactly does 'contemplating the situation we are in' mean!

by Liz Eagles 01.07.12 10:23

In all of this tragic saga it will always appear that the McCanns act on the advice of others. It's an amazing cop-out when things go wrong (it wasn't us, we were acting under professional advice). That professional advice is being paid for from the fund? yes/no?. If the McCanns are paying for professional advice say from the proceeds of the bewk then there will be a tax trail on that income surely. It's not clear if it only the royalties are contributed to the fund.

There was no need for a fund whatsoever or for aggressive libel suits either imo. Amending the terms of the fund has been played down with mastery as have the published 'transparent' accounts. Why not publish these transparent accounts on the website the contributors to the fund are paying for? The findmadeliene website is tired, shabby and does not much more than to blatantly ask people for money - and even then some items are out of stock. The updates are infrequent and their content innocuous at best. The site is careful to support missing people charities and ooze a bit of enthusiasm there.

We've gone in five years from Gerry's blogs which were bizarre to say the least, to Kate's bewk(s) and subsequently to their inclusion as important people in the Leveson Inquiry.

At the bottom of all of this is Madeleine, a three year old girl who was badly let down by her parents who now seem to have celebrity status and bask in the protection of hard-nosed, top notch professionals paid for by a fund (in whole or in part) that was meant to find Madeleine.

Just my very humble opinion.

by **tigger** 10.07.12 8:30

From the Sun: Article by A.Lazzeri 10/7/12:

If you recognise a missing person from one of the ads, make sure you call 116 000.
If you spot a missingperson ring 116 000
YOU can also help Kate McCann’s campaign by donating to the charity Missing People.

A donation of £3 pays for a poster appeal for a missing child. And a gift of £10 pays for a volunteer to follow up a sighting.

Give £3 by texting SEARCH to 70990. Or give £10 by calling freephone 0800 MISSING (647 7464).

If you have information about Madeleine McCann ring the Find Madeleine team on 0845 838 4699, or contact the Met’s Operation Grange on 0207 321 9251. Unquote

Imo this will muddy the waters considerably to the extend that people will not be clear which cause they are donating their money to.
If people choose to donate money for a poster and a volunteer to follow up a sighting - which child do they choose? Or who does choose which child will be featured?
It is very likely that - thanks to advertising Madeleine separately here with a telephone number - most people will think they are donating to find Maddie.

Why should a volunteer need to be paid? Ten pounds isn't going to cover any worthwhile effort, it's a tip and an amount that most kind people will donate, thinking they are doing a good deed.

Madeleine McCann should not be separately mentioned in any publicity this REAL charity organisation undertakes.

I will be interested to see how the accounts of this charity compare with the Company of the McCanns. If for instance posters of Maddie will be provided by the Company and paid for by the Charity for Missing Children?

Is Mrs. McCann going to be charging for her services in the same way that Cherie Booth and Lady Meyer did with the PACT charity - to such an extend that their 'expenses' were nearly equal to the incoming funds?

by Angelique 10.07.12 12:24

I am absolutely appalled, dumbfounded, whatever.

Well, we knew they were aiming high - in a way, it's insurance that they will never be held responsible for leaving their children alone whilst socialising.

As regards whether Kate will be salaried - I expect so!

by **tigger** 10.07.12 13:25

Angelique wrote:I am absolutely appalled, dumbfounded, whatever.

Well, we knew they were aiming high - in a way, it's insurance that they will never be held responsible for leaving their children alone whilst socialising.

As regards whether Kate will be salaried - I expect so!

Their ONLY safe place is in the limelight. That's why the Pope visit was arranged in such a hurry - it gives them credibility. Once you've read the files, also the ONLY credibility.

Detailed Fund accounts please - Team McCann - as promised.