Madeleine investigation to continue for another year

Scotland Yard has been granted a further £300,000 to fund Madeline McCann detectives’ costs for another year.

A Home Office spokesman commented, “All applications for Special Grant funding are considered carefully on their individual merits, however, decisions are made in batches to allow us to better consider the impact on the overall policing budget.

“Due to this, the next round of Special Grant funding will not be decided until October, however we have written to Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime in the meantime with assurance that the Metropolitan Police Service will receive a similar level of funding for Operation Grange for 2019/20 as it did for the previous year.”

The Met wanted the additional money, in a case that already has cost UK taxpayers over £11 million, to continue to work on what it describes as ‘outstanding leads.’

The extra funding for Operation Grange should allow a further year’s work to be carried out.

Madeleine was nearly four when she disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May, 2007.

An initial Portuguese investigation led to no result and Scotland Yard launched an investigation in 2011 with the same effect, despite throwing detectives and resources at the mystery.

There now are just a few officers working on the case and, despite looking at more than 60 ‘persons of interest’ and making inquiries as to the whereabouts of 650 sex offenders, the result has been a massive and embarrassing ‘zero.’