Tycoons who bankrolled Madeleine fund refuse to fund McCanns' legal defence

Tycoons who bankrolled Madeleine fund refuse to fund McCanns' legal defence
Last updated at 13:11 13 September 2007

Millionaires who bankrolled the campaign to find Madeleine McCann are refusing to fund her parents' legal defence.
Two wealthy individuals who helped Kate and Gerry McCann in their global search for Madeleine now say they will not pledge any more cash at this time.
When contacted by the Mail's sister newspaper, the Evening Standard, they refused to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
But one leading tycoon said that without knowing the facts about the Madeleine case, it would not be possible to pay for their legal team.
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The couple have been named formal suspects in the police investigation and may be charged at any time.
The McCanns have hired Britain's top criminal law specialists Kingsley Napley to clear their reputations. But with the investigation dragging on, their legal costs could run into millions if the case goes to trial.
The trustees of Madeleine's Fund - which has raised more than £1 million - announced yesterday they would not allow the McCanns to use the money to pay their lawyers. The McCanns had earlier declared they did not want the money anyway.
One businessman said: "I am not going to contribute any more. It is a difficult issue and it is not something I propose to get engaged in.
"It is the most confusing scenario anybody has ever seen. I am not judge and jury and I hope what I am reading is wrong.
"If they cannot convince the people who already put the money in, they are not starting in a good place. If they can turn the tide in some form maybe there will be loads of backers. But right now this does not look a good place to go."
Another tycoon who pledged more than £100,000 to the Find Madeleine appeal ruled out making a donation to the legal fighting fund.
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"We won't be pledging any more right now," said the entrepreneur, adding: "I don't think that at the moment we would allow the money to be swapped to cover defence costs, but this is a difficult position and a very sensitive issue."
Backers who have bankrolled the hunt for Madeleine include author JK Rowling, Sir Richard Branson, Topshop owner Sir Philip Green, Ann Summers boss Jacqueline Gold, sports retailing magnate Sir Tom Hunter and EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
The fund's spokeswoman is Esther McVey, the former GMTV presenter, a schoolfriend of Mrs McCann.
A close family friend said the McCanns needed to start winning back the British public and were on the verge of a new public relations push to do so. The friend said: "We need to rectify the PR and the fightback needs to start and it needs to start now."
The source suggested a benefactor was waiting in the wings and has had a number of meetings with the McCanns and their legal team about giving money to any new legal fighting fund.
Mr McCann's brother John McCann said the fund's decision not to pay the couple's legal fees had a "big implication". He said: "Everybody knows legal fees do not come cheap, particularly if you want to engage decent criminal advice, so we are going to have to look at another solution there."
The desperate need for cash to pay lawyers comes as pressure again intensifies on the McCanns. It is understood Portuguese police have requested that their British counterparts today seize a laptop owned by Mr McCann. They are expected to visit the McCanns at their home in Rothley, Leicestershire, to confiscate the computer.
The four-year-old vanished on 3May from the family apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve as her parents dined in a tapas bar nearby.
A sense of how the McCanns have lost public confidence comes in an internet petition signed by more than 17,000 users demanding Leicestershire social services investigate the McCanns for "neglecting" Madeleine and twins Sean and Amelie by leaving them "unattended in an unlocked ground floor hotel room". Many of the signatories have added hurtful and abusive remarks.
Last night Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of DNA fingerprinting, told Newsnight he was prepared to act as an expert witness for the couple. He also stressed that DNA matches on their own did not establish a person's innocence or guilt.
Sir Alec said: "There are no genetic characters in Madeleine that are not found in at least one other member of the family.
"So then you have an incomplete DNA profile, that could raise a potential problem in assigning a profile to Madeleine given that all other members of that family would have been in that car.
"DNA doesn't have the words innocence or guilt in it - that is a legal concept. What it seeks to establish is connections and identifications."

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Very interesting times ahead.


MOD NOTE : 
This topic has been merged with an older one.

This is an old report from 2007. That may have been the situation then but it's not clear what the position is at the present. Maybe they have rich backers still or maybe not. If not then they will likely state that they have no choice but to use the fund money to pay legal costs.
They surely wouldn't down-size their palatial abode, would they?

It makes you wonder though whether anyone will be bank rolling them because if they were we might not have seen the articles this week in the papers about them being down to their last £750,000 and once that's used there will be no money left for the search for Maddie.

That's fron 2007. 
So many knighted people were/is their financial backers. Birds of a feather and all that. 

This is what was reported from the 2007 article:


But one leading tycoon said that without knowing the facts about the Madeleine case, it would not be possible to pay for their legal team.


At least this person had a choice, but it seems that the very generous general public who donated  might not have one.

I would be very surprised if any "tycoons" would be willing to finance the McCanns' legal fees at this point, simply from the point of view that a very good argument could be made about the farcical way they frittered away the Fund on dodgy investigators and pie in the sky escapades.

Anyone with any common sense can see that instead of hiring legitimate investigators with a successful track record to try and "find" Madeleine, the McCanns insisted on going with people who hadn't a clue, and who were destined from the start to fail.

Expert advice about hiring legitimate investigators would have been available to the McCanns at the time. I can only conclude they ignored it to pursue their own agenda.

If any "tycoons" were considering funding the McCanns legal expenses now, I would think they'd first look long and hard at the way their donations were spent over the past 9 years, and I suggest they'd come to the conclusion that their money was foolishly and not very convincingly given away, and the McCanns deserve no more of their help.