Madeleine fund has stopped paying McCanns' mortgage

The fund set up to help to find Madeleine McCann has revealed that it stopped paying for her parents�?mortgage after they were made official suspects in her disappearance.

The Find Madeleine fund, which has raised £1.09 million from public donations, agreed to make two payments on the McCann’s £460,000 home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

However, the payments stopped when Kate and Gerry McCann were made suspects on September 7. The fund also ruled that it would not help to pay the couple’s legal bills.

Clarence Mitchell, the couple’s spokesman, said Mr and Mrs McCann began using the fund earlier this year to help to pay their mortgage when they took unpaid leave from their jobs. “When they were made arguidos (suspects), it stopped, which was a mutual decision on the part of the fund and the McCanns,�?he said. “They were happy to accept that their changed status meant they were no longer entitled to that assistance.�?

Mr McCann, 39, will return to work as a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester on Thursday. However, his wife is thought unlikely to return to work as a locum GP for the foreseeable future.

The Find Madeleine fund, a not-for-profit company, was created with three specific aims: to find the missing girl, support her family and bring the abductor to justice. Any remaining money will go to help other missing children. It is administered by a board of trustees including friends, relatives and colleagues of the couple and is run by a full-time paid organiser.

The fund has already paid for Mr and Mrs McCann to make a series of international trips to promote the search for their daughter and for their living costs while in Portugal. Last month it announced a £80,000 advertising campaign in the Iberian Peninsular and North Africa.

The fund also pays for the running of a website to promote the search for Madeleine and the services of the McCann’s first official spokeswoman, Justine McGuinness, who is reported to have been paid £51,000 in salary and expenses.

Meanwhile, a nanny who worked at the Algarve holiday resort where Madeleine was abducted, has told private investigators that she caught a stranger hiding outside the family’s apartment. The woman called a telephone hotline set up by the McCann’s private detectives to tell how the man ran off after she spotted him lurking in the shadows at the Ocean Club complex. She said that the man, who is similar to the description of the potential abductor, was hiding outside the ground floor apartment last summer while she babysat a six-year-old boy whose parents were playing tennis.

Madeleine is alleged to have been abducted from the apartment on May 3 while her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant. A friend said that she saw a man of Portuguese appearance, aged between 35 and 40, running away from the McCann’s apartment caring a child.

Metodo 3, the Barcelona-based private detective agency that is now working for the McCanns, is believed to have taken a call from the woman last week. The agency is also trawling lists of Portuguese paedophiles �?and working on the theory that Madeleine was snatched by someone who stole her to order for a wealthy Moroccan.

Paulo Rebelo, the new head of the Portuguese police investigation, and five other officers last night tested the kidnap scenario during a reconstruction of events at apartment 5A of the Ocean Club.

The detectives passed a blue blanket, folded like a body of a child, through the window of the bedroom where Madeleine had been sleeping with Sean and Amelie, her two-year-old twin siblings. The officers also paced out 100 yards to the home of the other official suspect, Robert Murat, 33. He worked as a police translator in the first week of Madeleine’s case and insists that he was at the Casa Liliana villa with his mother on the night she disappeared.

The detectives also walked to the flat of Sergey Malinka, 22, a Russian computer expert who has been interviewed twice about Madeleine’s disappearance. Mr Malinka had previously worked for Mr Murat. Both men strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

The full objects of the Find Madeleine fund are:
1.1.1 To secure the safe return to her family of Madeleine McCann who was abducted in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on Thursday May 3, 2007;
1.1.2 To procure that Madeleine’s abduction is thoroughly investigated and that her abductors, as well as those who played or play any part in assisting them, are identified and brought to justice;
1.1.3 To provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine’s family.
1.2 If the above objects are fulfilled then the objects of the foundation shall be to pursue such purposes in similar cases arising in the United Kingdom, Portugal or elsewhere.