McCanns hire crack team of ex-FBI agents to find Madeleine
Daily Mail
Daily Mail
By NIALL FIRTH
Last updated at 12:25 PM on 13th August 2008
Kate and Gerry McCann have hired a team of crack U.S detectives to lead the hunt for their missing daughter Madeleine, it has emerged.
The unnamed US firm is said to have been offered a £500,000 six-monthcontract by the Find Madeleine Fun to help spearhead the search.A friend of the McCanns said: 'The hunt for Madeleine is becoming moreand more international and it was felt that a truly international firm wasnow needed to lead the inquiry."These really are the big boys.
They are absolutely the best, but they areextremely secretive and cloak-and-dagger about what they do.'Since their appointment, Metodo has very much taken a back seat andthey are now concentrating primarily in Portugal and Spain and across theStraits of Gibraltar into north Africa, where they have their main contacts.
'The American agency is pretty much handling everything else.
'The secretive firm is said to employ ex-FBI, CIA and U.S special forces,according to the Daily Mirror.
The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell, said: 'Kate and Gerry madeit clear from the outset they would leave no stone unturned in findingMadeleine and that means employing the very best people in any givenfield.
'It is correct that an international firm of investigators have been appointed.'But I am unable to say anything at all about them because of the covertnature of their work and the need for secrecy, not only in looking forMadeleine, but also in relation to previous operations.
'The McCanns now have detectives working around the world at a reported cost of £166,000 a month.
Among the possible sightings they are following up, apparently ignored by Portuguese police, is one by a British yachtsman on the Caribbean island of Margarita last May.
