McCanns used funds raised to find missing Maddie to fight libel action with cop

09 January 2023 , 20:45

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Kate and Gerry McCann during an interview (Image: PA)

The parents of Madeleine McCann had to use funds raised to search for their daughter to fight an ex-police officer who made “unfounded” claims about the case.

Last September, Kate and Gerry McCann lost a 13-year libel battle with Goncalo Amaral, who had suggested they were involved in their daughter’s disappearance.

Accounts for Madeleine’s Fund, a not-for-profit company, reveal it paid £6,695 in legal costs “in relation to a libel action in Portugal brought by Gerald and Kate McCann”.

The latest accounts also show Madeleine’s Fund received £3,498 from sales of Kate’s book “Madeleine” in the previous year, and the fund has £970,767 in cash and assets.

Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007 (PA)

The girl disappeared during a family holiday in Portugal (PA)

Madeleine’s Fund was established to “secure the safe return” of the McCanns daughter, who was three when she vanished during a holiday in Portugal, in 2007.

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The McCanns sued Amaral for libel over claims in his book, Maddie: The Truth About The Lie, and in 2015, a Lisbon court ordered him to pay them £440,000 damages.

The following year an appeal court overturned the decision, and in 2017 the supreme court also found against the McCanns. They then took the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

But in September, the seven judges unanimously upheld the former detective’s right to free speech.

The McCanns have maintained that they only took action against Amaral because his “unfounded claims were having a detrimental impact on the search for Madeleine”.

In 2020, paedophile Christian Brueckner, 45, was named as the prime suspect over Madeleine’s disappearance by authorities in Germany, where he is in jail. He denies any involvement.

Martin Fricker