HAPPY MADDIE ON LAST DAY IN UK
Tycoon’s shocking TV claim
HAUNTING footage emerged yesterday of three-year-old Madeleine McCann getting on the plane for the fateful 2007 Portuguese holiday where she vanished.
PORTUGUESE authorities tried to fit up Madeleine McCann’s parents over her disappearance to save the country’s ailing tourism industry, a new TV documentary claims.
Double glazing tycoon Brian Kennedy, who has ploughed a chunk of his £400million fortune into helping Kate and Gerry with the search, accused Portugal of making the pair scapegoats to rescue its economy.
He claims authorities encouraged police to target the couple as suspects.
The country’s tourism trade dwindled after the youngster’s 2007 disappearance sparked fears child snatchers were at large.
Brian, former owner of Sale Sharks rugby club, told a new eight-part Netflix documentary The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann: “You could understand how the mood of public opinion would go from sympathy to vilification.
Involved
“Let’s find somebody to blame for this that doesn’t make us look bad.
“I think it’s all tied into tourism, industry and tourism being down and finances, the GDP of the country.
“It’s much easier to say: ‘Aha, we’ve found some idea later that the parents could have been involved in this.’”
Brian helped fund the McCanns’ search for their daughter, who vanished from their holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz while they dined with pals in a nearby tapas bar.
The documentary includes footage of Madeleine boarding a plane to go on the ill-fated holiday.
Speaking for the first time about his involvement in the hunt he said he was convinced of the couple’s innois cence within “12 seconds”.
He stepped in after seeing the public turn against them when the original Portuguese police investigation – led by detective Goncalo Amaral – named them as suspects four months after three-year-old Madeleine vanished.
Before offering to help he insisted on meeting the doctors from Rothley, Leics, face-to-face.
“They both looked like a wreck,” he said. “After 12 seconds just reading the emotions everything told me 100% that this woman is absolutely genuine – she a victim.” Brian went on to provide funding for the couple to hire the Spainbased Metodo 3 private detective agency to look for Madeleine and PR expert Clarence Mitchell to help the search reach TV stations and newspapers.
The tycoon and his son Patrick even flew from the UK to Morocco in their private jet to personally check out one reported sighting of the youngster in the Atlas mountains.
They tracked down a
Madeleine lookalike who had been seen with a darkskinned woman by a tourist but found blonde-haired children were common in the region.
The documentary revealed that while Metodo 3’s pursuit of paedophiles on the dark web did not find Madeleine, the information they unearthed helped bust a 23-strong child sex gang in Spain.
The documentary suggests she was abducted from her family’s apartment and may still be alive.