Madeleine clues hidden for 5 years

27 October 2013
The Sunday Times
Sunday Times Insight team

The new prime suspect was first singled out by detectives in 2008. Their findings were suppressed. Insight reports

Madeleine disappeared from the Praia da Luz resort in May 2007Madeleine disappeared from the Praia da Luz resort in May 2007 (Adrian Sheratt)

THE critical new evidence at the centre of Scotland Yard’s search for Madeleine McCann was kept secret for five years after it was presented to her parents by ex-MI5 investigators.

The evidence was in fact taken from an intelligence report produced for Gerry and Kate McCann by a firm of former spies in 2008.

It contained crucial E-Fits of a man seen carrying a child on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance, which have only this month become public after he was identified as the prime suspect by Scotland Yard.

A team of hand-picked former MI5 agents had been hired by the McCanns to chase a much-needed breakthrough in the search for their missing daughter Madeleine.

10 months after the three-year-old had disappeared from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, and the McCanns were beginning to despair over the handling of the local police investigation. They were relying on the new team to bring fresh hope.

But within months the relationship had soured. A report produced by the investigators was deemed “hypercritical” of the McCanns and their friends, and the authors were threatened with legal action if it was made public. Its contents remained secret until Scotland Yard detectives conducting a fresh review of the case contacted the authors and asked for a copy.

They found that it contained new evidence about a key suspect seen carrying a child away from the McCanns’ holiday apartment on the night Madeleine disappeared.

This sighting is now considered the main lead in the investigation and E-Fits of the suspect, taken from the report, were the centrepiece of a Crimewatch appeal that attracted more than 2,400 calls from the public this month.

One of the investigators whose work was sidelined said last week he was “utterly stunned” when he watched the programme and saw the evidence his team had passed to the McCanns five years ago presented as a breakthrough.

The team of investigators from the security firm Oakley International were hired by the McCanns’ Find Madeleine fund, which bankrolled private investigations into the girl’s disappearance. They were led by Henri Exton, MI5’s former undercover operations chief.

Their report, seen by The Sunday Times, focused on a sighting by an Irish family of a man carrying a child at about 10pm on May 3, 2007, when Madeleine went missing.

An earlier sighting by one of the McCanns’ friends was dismissed as less credible after “serious inconsistencies” were found in her evidence. The report also raised questions about “anomalies” in the statements given by the McCanns and their friends.

Exton confirmed last week that the fund had silenced his investigators for years after they handed over their controversial findings. He said: “A letter came from their lawyers binding us to the confidentiality of the report.”

He claimed the legal threat had prevented him from handing over the report to Scotland Yard’s fresh investigation, until detectives had obtained written permission from the fund.

A source close to the fund said the report was considered “hypercritical of the people involved” and “would have been completely distracting” if it became public.

Kate and Gerry McCann: now officially not suspects, say the Portuguese authoritiesKate and Gerry McCann: now officially not suspects, say the Portuguese authorities (Adrian Sheratt)

Oakley’s six-month investigation included placing undercover agents inside the Ocean Club where the family stayed, lie detector tests, covert surveillance and a forensic re-examination of all existing evidence.

It was immediately clear that two sightings of vital importance had been reported to the police. Two men were seen carrying children near the apartments between 9pm, when Madeleine was last seen by Gerry, and 10pm, when Kate discovered her missing.

The first man was seen at 9.15pm by Jane Tanner, a friend of the McCanns, who had been dining with them at the tapas bar in the resort. She saw a man carrying a girl just yards from the apartment as she went to check on her children.

The second sighting was by Martin Smith and his family from Ireland, who saw a man carrying a child near the apartment just before 10pm.

The earlier Tanner sighting had always been treated as the most significant, but the Oakley team controversially poured cold water on her account.

Instead, they focused on the Smith sighting, travelling to Ireland to interview the family and produce E-Fits of the man they saw. Their report said the Smiths were “helpful and sincere” and concluded: “The Smith sighting is credible evidence of a sighting of Maddie and more credible than Jane Tanner’s sighting”. The evidence had been “neglected for too long” and an “overemphasis placed on Tanner”.

The new focus shifted the believed timeline of the abduction back by 45 minutes.

The pictures of a man who may have taken Madeleine were drawn up in 2008 The pictures of a man who may have taken Madeleine were drawn up in 2008 (Adrian Sheratt)

The report, delivered to the McCanns in November 2008, recommended that the revised timeline should be the basis for future investigations and that the Smith E-Fits should be released without delay.

The potential abductor seen by the Smiths is now the prime suspect in Scotland Yard’s investigation, after detectives established that the man seen earlier by Tanner was almost certainly a father carrying his child home from a nearby night creche. The Smith E-Fits were the centrepiece of the Crimewatch appeal.

One of the Oakley investigators said last week: “I was absolutely stunned when I watched the programme . . . It most certainly wasn’t a new timeline and it certainly isn’t a new revelation. It is absolute nonsense to suggest either of those things . . . And those E-Fits you saw on Crimewatch are ours,” he said.

The detailed images of the face of the man seen by the Smith family were never released by the McCanns. But an artist’s impression of the man seen earlier by Tanner was widely promoted, even though the face had to be left blank because she had only seen him fleetingly and from a distance.

Various others images of lone men spotted hanging around the resort at other times were also released.

Nor were the Smith E-Fits included in Kate McCann’s 2011 book, Madeleine, which contained a whole section on eight “key sightings” and identified those of the Smiths and Tanner as most “crucial”. Descriptions of all seven other sightings were accompanied by an E-Fit or artist’s impression. The Smiths’ were the only exception. So why was such a “crucial” piece of evidence kept under lock and key?

The relationship between the fund and Oakley was already souring by the time the report was submitted — and its findings could only have made matters worse.

As well as questioning parts of the McCanns’ evidence, it contained sensitive information about Madeleine’s sleeping patterns and raised the highly sensitive possibility that she could have died in an accident after leaving the apartment herself from one of two unsecured doors.

There was also an uncomfortable complication with Smith’s account. He had originally told the police that he had “recognised something” about the way Gerry McCann carried one of his children which reminded him of the man he had seen in Praia da Luz.

Smith has since stressed that he does not believe the man he saw was Gerry, and Scotland Yard do not consider this a possibility. Last week the McCanns were told officially by the Portuguese authorities that they are not suspects.

The McCanns were also understandably wary of Oakley after allegations that the chairman, Kevin Halligen, failed to pass on money paid by the fund to Exton’s team. Halligen denies this. He was later convicted of fraud in an unrelated case in the US.

The McCann fund source said the Oakley report was passed on to new private investigators after the contract ended, but that the firm’s work was considered “contaminated” by the financial dispute.

He said the fund wanted to continue to pursue information about the man seen by Tanner, and it would have been too expensive to investigate both sightings in full — so the Smith E-Fits were not publicised. It was also considered necessary to threaten legal action against the authors.

“[The report] was hypercritical of the people involved . . . It just wouldn’t be conducive to the investigation to have that report publicly declared because . . . the newspapers would have been all over it. And it would have been completely distracting,” said the source.

A statement released by the Find Madeleine fund said that “all information privately gathered during the search for Madeleine has been fully acted upon where necessary” and had been passed to Scotland Yard.

It continued: “Throughout the investigation, the Find Madeleine fund’s sole priority has been, and remains, to find Madeleine and bring her home as swiftly as possible.”

Insight: Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert

Continue Reading... Labels: 2013, Find Madeleine Fund, Henri Exton, Madeleine McCann, MI5, Oakley Intl

Fraud suspect Kevin Richard Halligen allegedly posed as a spy and cheated the elite on both sides of the Atlantic

Kevin Richard Halligen

Fraud suspect Kevin Richard Halligen allegedly posed as a spy and cheated the elite on both sides of the Atlantic
10 June 2012
Washington Post
Kevin Sullivan
(MCF Archive: http://themaddiecasefiles.com/post238543.html#p238543)

Some people knew him as Kevin. He told others he was Richard. Everyone could see he had money to burn, and most people thought he was a British spy. But nobody in Washington really knew Kevin Richard Halligen, not even the woman he pretended to marry.

Halligen now sits in a London prison, fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces felony fraud charges stemming from his days of extravagant living in Washington high society.

For about three years, until 2008, Halligen spent hundreds of thousands of dollars living large in Washington. He stayed in a Willard Hotel suite for months at a time and drank the days away at pricey Georgetown restaurants. He traveled everywhere in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car, set up high-tech offices in Herndon and bought a grand home in Great Falls.

Smart, charming and favoring black turtlenecks and sunglasses, Halligen told everyone that he was a spy, or a former spy, or connected to spies. He told friends that he was under such deep cover that he took over his fiancee’s place as a “safe house.”

Virtually all of it, it turns out, was fabricated or exaggerated, according to associates who have since investigated his background. But with amazing ease and a perfect British accent, the diminutive Halligen schmoozed his way into Washington’s intelligence elite — Pentagon officials, influential lawyers and lobbyists, former CIA operatives.

And he took their money.

He set up shop as a corporate security consultant, offering his dubious “operational experience” in intelligence to solve delicate problems for customers working in dangerous places.

In a capital with a long history of spies, foreigners with shadowy backgrounds, big talkers and charlatans, Halligen didn’t set off any alarm bells at first, according to former associates. But that changed when they concluded that Halligen was taking money and not doing the work he promised.

The U.S. government obtained an indictment against him in 2009 on criminal charges of bilking a client out of $2.1 million, and judges in the District and Virginia have ordered him to pay $6.5 million to former partners who claim he fleeced them.

Halligen, through his London lawyer, declined to comment as he fights extradition to the United States in British courts.

But in dozens of interviews in Washington and London, those who knew Halligen described how he created a trail of creditors, from lawyers to landlords to housekeepers. And they said he left a group of Washington insiders wondering how one charming and audacious hustler managed to seduce them all.

‘I was duped’

Halligen fooled London before he fooled Washington.

“I was duped,” said John Holmes, a retired British army general who was head of the British military’s special forces.

Holmes said he met Halligen in 2002, when Halligen took an IT job at a private security consulting firm where Holmes was working after his military retirement.

Holmes, in an interview in his London office, said he knew Halligen was never a member of any intelligence service. But he worked on the periphery of that world as an engineer for companies that provided technical support — designing batteries, for example — to the British government and military.

Holmes was impressed with Halligen’s smarts and entrepreneurial spirit, he said, so he helped him start his own firm, Red Defence International. Holmes said that over time he realized that Halligen was grossly exaggerating his background to clients and others and that he had an uncanny ability to keep his stories straight.

“He had an intellect that would instinctively allow him to decide what he would say to people and what he wouldn’t say,” Holmes said.

Other friends said Halligen had a habit of hearing spy stories and then repeating them later as tales of his own bravery. One friend said Halligen loved to show off a metal cigarette lighter with an inscription thanking him for helping in a secret rescue of hostages in Colombia.

“A real spy doesn’t do that,” said the friend, who asked not to be named.

Halligen’s taste for luxury was also getting him into trouble. Scarlett Guess, Halligen’s landlord in London, said Halligen rented three floors of her building for close to $20,000 a month, but paid only sporadically.

At the same time, his corporate bank statements, contained in court records in Washington, show that he was spending tens of thousands of dollars at such places as the five-star Stafford London Hotel and Les Ambassadeurs Club, a private casino where membership costs about $40,000 a year.

Before Holmes noticed the increasing warning signs, he said, he backed Halligen’s application to join the Special Forces Club in central London, an exclusive private club for people with links to British intelligence.

That membership helped Halligen immensely as he set his sights on an ultra-lucrative security consultant mecca: Washington.

A high-level network

When Halligen breezed into Washington about 2005, one of his first calls, according to associates, was to Patton Boggs, the heavyweight law firm. He hired the firm to help set up his new U.S. business, Oakley International, which offered risk analysis and security advice to corporate customers.

A key contact at Patton Boggs was lobbyist John C. Garrett, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who serves as the firm’s senior defense policy adviser. Garrett declined to comment for this article, saying Patton Boggs does not discuss former clients.

Halligen used each new contact to methodically build up a high-level network. Garrett introduced Halligen to a number of key Washington establishment figures, including Noel Koch, who was a White House aide under President Richard M. Nixon and whom President Obama appointed deputy undersecretary of defense.

“If John Garrett was vouching for him, that was good enough for me,” Koch said.

Koch recalled getting to know Halligen over boozy lunches at Ristorante La Perla on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Shown a photo of Halligen, who, 5-foot-6 and clean-cut, looks like a slightly elfin Boy Scout, La Perla owner Vittorio Testa recalled that he came in nearly every day. Testa said Halligen would sit on the outdoor patio smoking cigarettes and drinking heavily, often arriving at 11 a.m. and not leaving until 4.

“A very elegant man, always good manners,” Testa said.

Koch said he was amazed by Halligen’s lunchtime drinking.

“He’d say, ‘Let’s have martinis,’ and I’d have a martini, as would he,” Koch said. “Then we had another one, then he’d want a bottle of wine. We became fast friends over all those martinis.”

Koch was running a private security consulting company, and at one of their lunches, Halligen said he wanted to subscribe to his firm’s newsletter. Koch said that would cost $15,000, and he said Halligen made an extravagant show of overpaying.

“He wrote me a check for $20,000,” Koch said, “right there at the table.”

In the fall of 2006, Halligen still had money coming in from Red Defence in London, as well as his growing Washington business. But a big break came that September when two executives from a Dutch multinational firm, Trafigura, were arrested in Ivory Coast, accused of illegally dumping toxic waste.

Trafigura hired Halligen to help win release of the executives. Halligen got a large monthly retainer, though it’s unclear exactly what work he did for the money or how much he received. Friends said it ran into the millions of dollars.

A Trafigura spokesman declined to comment. The company eventually paid $198 million to Ivory Coast officials. The executives were released in February 2007, and payments to Halligen stopped.

But up to that point, money was pouring into Halligen’s corporate account, and he was spending it just as fast.

Halligen bought a $1.7 million house with a swimming pool in Great Falls. (The indictment charges that he bought the house the day after Trafigura transferred $2.1 million to him to cover his expenses.)

Halligen was already living in a $6,800-a-month rented house in Georgetown, on N Street near Wisconsin Avenue NW, and yet, at the same time, he was often staying at the Willard.

He was paying a driver about $6,000 a month, usually keeping him and the Lincoln Town Car for 15 hours a day. He dropped hundreds of dollars almost daily at restaurants such as La Perla, Cafe Milano, Martin’s Tavern, Neyla or Shelly’s Back Room, according to his corporate bank statements at the time.

“We used to call him James Bond,” said Robert P. Materazzi, owner of Shelly’s, a downtown D.C. restaurant and cigar bar. Materazzi said that Halligen was “secretive” about his business but that he was a gregarious personality and extravagant tipper who always sat in the same table near the front of the bar, drinking expensive red wine and smoking.

Meda Mladek, Halligen’s landlord on N Street, said Halligen did thousands of dollars worth of damage and unauthorized — and shoddy — construction at her house.

“He pretended to work for the CIA,” Mladek said. “He said he had to have a room that was totally secure, so he had to make new walls, a new ceiling, special doors.”

“He was quite elegant,” she said. “But I had problems, problems, problems.”

The show wedding

Amid it all, Halligen still found time for romance.

Friends said he met Maria Dybczak, a Commerce Department lawyer with big, dark eyes and a brilliant smile, and started courting her lavishly. He bought her a huge diamond ring, a Prada handbag and a pair of purebred Hungarian vizsla puppies, friends said.

Tereza McGuinn, a D.C. makeup artist who was close to Dybczak, said Halligen told Dybczak that he was a British agent. She said that he took Dybczak one weekend for a course on high-per­formance defensive driving and that he taught her how to handle a gun.

“I thought there was something really wrong about it,” McGuinn said in an interview. McGuinn said that she didn’t believe Halligen’s spy background but that Dybczak seemed blinded by his charm and attention.

In a brief interview at her D.C. home, Dybczak said she and her family had been “devastated” by Halligen but declined to say more.

On the last Friday in April 2007, she wore a white wedding gown at a spectacular evening ceremony at the Evermay estate in Georgetown.

Dybczak’s family, who friends said paid for most of the wedding, came to town from Alabama. Halligen flew over at least a dozen friends from London, first-class, and put them up in suites at the Hay-Adams Hotel. Washington guests included Koch and Garrett, the Patton Boggs lobbyist, who was Halligen’s best man.

Security men with earpieces watched over the high-powered crowd of about 100 people, and guests were met by a sign in calligraphy telling them that no cameras or phones were allowed.

Wedding photographer Clay Blackmore said Dybczak asked him to shoot film only — no digital images.

“She told me, ‘Richard is very connected, and anybody wearing a pin on their lapel can’t be photographed,’ ” Blackmore said. “She told me ‘Richard is top-level and he’s a secret agent’ or something like that. I just bought into it like everybody else did.”

McGuinn said Dybczak and Halligen went “hog-wild” on the wedding, with a huge fireworks display and an extravagant dinner of lobster and lamb in the ballroom, where dinner chairs were covered with thousands of dollars’ worth of silk pillows.

On Evermay’s grand back terrace, Halligen and Dybczak stood on a carpet of rose petals as the minister read vows from a leather-bound notebook and pronounced them husband and wife.

What the guests didn’t know was that the minister was Harry Winter, a professional actor from Arlington’s Signature Theatre, who was hired by the couple to preside over an elaborate fake.

According to friends, Halligen told Dybczak just before the wedding — when guests had been invited and arrangements made — that because he was involved in undercover intelligence operations, he could not sign any public documents — including a marriage license.

It’s unclear whether Dybczak believed him. But rather than cancel the ceremony, she helped him arrange the show wedding. Winter said she paid him $300 in cash.

“It was a wonderful, beautiful service,” Winter said in an interview. “Nobody knew it wasn’t real.”

Nor did they know that Halligen was already married.

British records show that Halligen had been married 16 years earlier to a woman named Jennifer Darvill, and he was still married to her at the time of the Evermay wedding.

“He told me plenty of lies,” said Darvill, reached in England.

Darvill said she met Halligen in 1988, and in all the time she knew him, “I was not aware that he had any involvement with security, military or intelligence.”

She said he left her in 1998 to have an affair with another woman, leaving behind a “stack of unpaid bills” that she paid by selling antiques inherited from her father.

.After the Evermay wedding, Halligen was riding high. He spent the next year building his business. By early 2008, court records show, London lawyer Mark Aspinall — who was his connection on the Trafigura case — had invested $750,000 in Halligen’s Oakley International.

Halligen also received an enormous boost from the internationally known case of Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old British girl who disappeared while on vacation with her family in Portugal.

In the spring of 2008, the Find Madeleine Fund hired Oakley International on a six-month contract worth just under $1 million. Halligen was supposed to use high-tech surveillance and satellite imagery and conduct interviews to help find the girl.

His bank accounts ballooned with regular deposits of $200,000 or more over the next few months. But Halligen’s carefully constructed life was starting to unravel.

Clarence Mitchell, a spokesman for the Find Madeleine Fund, said fund officials began questioning whether Halligen’s work was worth those large payments, and they terminated his contract in August 2008.

Aspinall, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly suspicious of what became of his $750,000 investment, and court records state that he made at least two trips to Washington to question Halligen.

By September 2008, the McCann contract was canceled, Halligen’s debts were mounting and his reputation was sinking. His relationship with Dybczak was over, and he was preparing his exit from Washington.

His corporate bank records show that in September, October and November 2008, Halligen drained $800,000 from his D.C. account and wired much of that overseas. He sold the Great Falls house. By November, his Washington bank account was overdrawn by $1,400. And Halligen was gone.

His former friends started looking for him and investigating his finances and background. They contacted the FBI. And they also started filing civil suits.

Aspinall filed suit in Washington to recover his investment in Oakley, and a judge ordered Halligen to pay back $871,000.

Halligen was also sued by another Washington insider, Andre Hollis, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, who had given a toast at the Evermay wedding.

Hollis, a lawyer who once worked as legal counsel to the House of Representatives and as senior adviser to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counter Narcotics, sued Halligen in Fairfax Country Circuit Court for $2.35 million.

Hollis alleged that Halligen hired him as chief executive of Oakley International and that Hollis bought an ownership stake in the company. He said that the investment turned out to be worthless and that Halligen drained the company’s accounts. A judge ordered Halligen to pay Hollis more than $5.7 million in damages.

As investigators pursued Halligen, they found yet another surprise. They unearthed documents suggesting that the silver-tongued Brit had actually been born in Ireland.

In November 2009, after a year on the run, Halligen was jailed after being arrested at a luxury hotel in Oxford, England. The bartender there recalled that Halligen had been staying at the hotel for weeks under an alias, with a girlfriend, running up huge bar tabs, buying drinks for the staff and spinning tales of life as a spy.

Staff researcher Jennifer Jenkins and special correspondent Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2012, Andre Hollis, CIA, Find Madeleine Fund, John Holmes, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Mark Aspinall, MI5, MI6, Oakley Intl, Patton Boggs, Red Defence, Special Forces Club, Trafigura

A player, but what was his game?

A player, but what was his game?
Sullivan, Kevin
The Washington Post
10 June 2012

Some people knew him as Kevin. He told others he was Richard. Everyone could see he had money to burn, and most people thought he was a British spy. But nobody in Washington really knew Kevin Richard Halligen, not even the woman he pretended to marry.

Halligen now sits in a London prison, fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces felony fraud charges stemming from his days of extravagant living in Washington high society.

For about three years, until 2008, Halligen spent hundreds of thousands of dollars living large in Washington. He stayed in a Willard Hotel suite for months at a time and drank the days away at pricey Georgetown restaurants. He traveled everywhere in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car, set up high-tech offices in Herndon and bought a grand home in Great Falls.

Smart, charming and favoring black turtlenecks and sunglasses, Halligen told everyone that he was a spy, or a former spy, or connected to spies. He told friends that he was under such deep cover that he took over his fiancee's place as a "safe house."

Virtually all of it, it turns out, was fabricated or exaggerated, according to associates who have since investigated his background. But with amazing ease and a perfect British accent, the diminutive Halligen schmoozed his way into Washington's intelligence elite - Pentagon officials, influential lawyers and lobbyists, former CIA operatives.

And he took their money.

He set up shop as a corporate security consultant, offering his dubious "operational experience" in intelligence to solve delicate problems for customers working in dangerous places.

In a capital with a long history of spies, foreigners with shadowy backgrounds, big talkers and charlatans, Halligen didn't set off any alarm bells at first, according to former associates. But that changed when they concluded that Halligen was taking money and not doing the work he promised.

The U.S. government obtained an indictment against him in 2009 on criminal charges of bilking a client out of $2.1 million, and judges in the District and Virginia have ordered him to pay $6.5 million to former partners who claim he fleeced them.

Halligen, through his London lawyer, declined to comment as he fights extradition to the United States in British courts.

But in dozens of interviews in Washington and London, those who knew Halligen described how he created a trail of creditors, from lawyers to landlords to housekeepers. And they said he left a group of Washington insiders wondering how one charming and audacious hustler managed to seduce them all.

'I was duped'

Halligen fooled London before he fooled Washington.

"I was duped," said John Holmes, a retired British army general who was head of the British military's special forces.

Holmes said he met Halligen in 2002, when Halligen took an IT job at a private security consulting firm where Holmes was working after his military retirement.

Holmes, in an interview in his London office, said he knew Halligen was never a member of any intelligence service. But he worked on the periphery of that world as an engineer for companies that provided technical support - designing batteries, for example - to the British government and military.

Holmes was impressed with Halligen's smarts and entrepreneurial spirit, he said, so he helped him start his own firm, Red Defence International. Holmes said that over time he realized that Halligen was grossly exaggerating his background to clients and others and that he had an uncanny ability to keep his stories straight.

"He had an intellect that would instinctively allow him to decide what he would say to people and what he wouldn't say," Holmes said.

Other friends said Halligen had a habit of hearing spy stories and then repeating them later as tales of his own bravery. One friend said Halligen loved to show off a metal cigarette lighter with an inscription thanking him for helping in a secret rescue of hostages in Colombia.

"A real spy doesn't do that," said the friend, who asked not to be named.

Halligen's taste for luxury was also getting him into trouble. Scarlett Guess, Halligen's landlord in London, said Halligen rented three floors of her building for close to $20,000 a month, but paid only sporadically.

At the same time, his corporate bank statements, contained in court records in Washington, show that he was spending tens of thousands of dollars at such places as the five-star Stafford London Hotel and Les Ambassadeurs Club, a private casino where membership costs about $40,000 a year.

Before Holmes noticed the increasing warning signs, he said, he backed Halligen's application to join the Special Forces Club in central London, an exclusive private club for people with links to British intelligence.

That membership helped Halligen immensely as he set his sights on an ultra-lucrative security consultant mecca: Washington.

A high-level network

When Halligen breezed into Washington about 2005, one of his first calls, according to associates, was to Patton Boggs, the heavyweight law firm. He hired the firm to help set up his new U.S. business, Oakley International, which offered risk analysis and security advice to corporate customers.

A key contact at Patton Boggs was lobbyist John C. Garrett, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who serves as the firm's senior defense policy adviser. Garrett declined to comment for this article, saying Patton Boggs does not discuss former clients.

Halligen used each new contact to methodically build up a high-level network. Garrett introduced Halligen to a number of key Washington establishment figures, including Noel Koch, who was a White House aide under President Richard M. Nixon and whom President Obama appointed deputy undersecretary of defense.

"If John Garrett was vouching for him, that was good enough for me," Koch said.

Koch recalled getting to know Halligen over boozy lunches at Ristorante La Perla on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Shown a photo of Halligen, who, 5-foot-6 and clean-cut, looks like a slightly elfin Boy Scout, La Perla owner Vittorio Testa recalled that he came in nearly every day. Testa said Halligen would sit on the outdoor patio smoking cigarettes and drinking heavily, often arriving at 11 a.m. and not leaving until 4.

"A very elegant man, always good manners," Testa said.

Koch said he was amazed by Halligen's lunchtime drinking.

"He'd say, 'Let's have martinis,' and I'd have a martini, as would he," Koch said. "Then we had another one, then he'd want a bottle of wine. We became fast friends over all those martinis."

Koch was running a private security consulting company, and at one of their lunches, Halligen said he wanted to subscribe to his firm's newsletter. Koch said that would cost $15,000, and he said Halligen made an extravagant show of overpaying.

"He wrote me a check for $20,000," Koch said, "right there at the table."

In the fall of 2006, Halligen still had money coming in from Red Defence in London, as well as his growing Washington business. But a big break came that September when two executives from a Dutch multinational firm, Trafigura, were arrested in Ivory Coast, accused of illegally dumping toxic waste.

Trafigura hired Halligen to help win release of the executives. Halligen got a large monthly retainer, though it's unclear exactly what work he did for the money or how much he received. Friends said it ran into the millions of dollars.

A Trafigura spokesman declined to comment. The company eventually paid $198 million to Ivory Coast officials. The executives were released in February 2007, and payments to Halligen stopped.

But up to that point, money was pouring into Halligen's corporate account, and he was spending it just as fast.

Halligen bought a $1.7 million house with a swimming pool in Great Falls. (The indictment charges that he bought the house the day after Trafigura transferred $2.1 million to him to cover his expenses.)

Halligen was already living in a $6,800-a-month rented house in Georgetown, on N Street near Wisconsin Avenue NW, and yet, at the same time, he was often staying at the Willard.

He was paying a driver about $6,000 a month, usually keeping him and the Lincoln Town Car for 15 hours a day. He dropped hundreds of dollars almost daily at restaurants such as La Perla, Cafe Milano, Martin's Tavern, Neyla or Shelly's Back Room, according to his corporate bank statements at the time.

"We used to call him James Bond," said Robert P. Materazzi, owner of Shelly's, a downtown D.C. restaurant and cigar bar. Materazzi said that Halligen was "secretive" about his business but that he was a gregarious personality and extravagant tipper who always sat in the same table near the front of the bar, drinking expensive red wine and smoking.

Meda Mladek, Halligen's landlord on N Street, said Halligen did thousands of dollars worth of damage and unauthorized - and shoddy - construction at her house.

"He pretended to work for the CIA," Mladek said. "He said he had to have a room that was totally secure, so he had to make new walls, a new ceiling, special doors."

"He was quite elegant," she said. "But I had problems, problems, problems."

The show wedding

Amid it all, Halligen still found time for romance.

Friends said he met Maria Dybczak, a Commerce Department lawyer with big, dark eyes and a brilliant smile, and started courting her lavishly. He bought her a huge diamond ring, a Prada handbag and a pair of purebred Hungarian vizsla puppies, friends said.

Tereza McGuinn, a D.C. makeup artist who was close to Dybczak, said Halligen told Dybczak that he was a British agent. She said that he took Dybczak one weekend for a course on high-performance defensive driving and that he taught her how to handle a gun.

"I thought there was something really wrong about it," McGuinn said in an interview. McGuinn said that she didn't believe Halligen's spy background but that Dybczak seemed blinded by his charm and attention.

In a brief interview at her D.C. home, Dybczak said she and her family had been "devastated" by Halligen but declined to say more.

On the last Friday in April 2007, she wore a white wedding gown at a spectacular evening ceremony at the Evermay estate in Georgetown.

Dybczak's family, who friends said paid for most of the wedding, came to town from Alabama. Halligen flew over at least a dozen friends from London, first-class, and put them up in suites at the Hay-Adams Hotel. Washington guests included Koch and Garrett, the Patton Boggs lobbyist, who was Halligen's best man.

Security men with earpieces watched over the high-powered crowd of about 100 people, and guests were met by a sign in calligraphy telling them that no cameras or phones were allowed.

Wedding photographer Clay Blackmore said Dybczak asked him to shoot film only - no digital images.

"She told me, 'Richard is very connected, and anybody wearing a pin on their lapel can't be photographed,' " Blackmore said. "She told me 'Richard is top-level and he's a secret agent' or something like that. I just bought into it like everybody else did."

McGuinn said Dybczak and Halligen went "hog-wild" on the wedding, with a huge fireworks display and an extravagant dinner of lobster and lamb in the ballroom, where dinner chairs were covered with thousands of dollars' worth of silk pillows.

On Evermay's grand back terrace, Halligen and Dybczak stood on a carpet of rose petals as the minister read vows from a leather-bound notebook and pronounced them husband and wife.

What the guests didn't know was that the minister was Harry Winter, a professional actor from Arlington's Signature Theatre, who was hired by the couple to preside over an elaborate fake.

According to friends, Halligen told Dybczak just before the wedding - when guests had been invited and arrangements made - that because he was involved in undercover intelligence operations, he could not sign any public documents - including a marriage license.

It's unclear whether Dybczak believed him. But rather than cancel the ceremony, she helped him arrange the show wedding. Winter said she paid him $300 in cash.

"It was a wonderful, beautiful service," Winter said in an interview. "Nobody knew it wasn't real."

Nor did they know that Halligen was already married.

British records show that Halligen had been married 16 years earlier to a woman named Jennifer Darvill, and he was still married to her at the time of the Evermay wedding.

"He told me plenty of lies," said Darvill, reached in England.

Darvill said she met Halligen in 1988, and in all the time she knew him, "I was not aware that he had any involvement with security, military or intelligence."

She said he left her in 1998 to have an affair with another woman, leaving behind a "stack of unpaid bills" that she paid by selling antiques inherited from her father.

Things fall apart

After the Evermay wedding, Halligen was riding high. He spent the next year building his business. By early 2008, court records show, London lawyer Mark Aspinall - who was his connection on the Trafigura case - had invested $750,000 in Halligen's Oakley International.

Halligen also received an enormous boost from the internationally known case of Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old British girl who disappeared while on vacation with her family in Portugal.

In the spring of 2008, the Find Madeleine Fund hired Oakley International on a six-month contract worth just under $1 million. Halligen was supposed to use high-tech surveillance and satellite imagery and conduct interviews to help find the girl.

His bank accounts ballooned with regular deposits of $200,000 or more over the next few months. But Halligen's carefully constructed life was starting to unravel.

Clarence Mitchell, a spokesman for the Find Madeleine Fund, said fund officials began questioning whether Halligen's work was worth those large payments, and they terminated his contract in August 2008.

Aspinall, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly suspicious of what became of his $750,000 investment, and court records state that he made at least two trips to Washington to question Halligen.

By September 2008, the McCann contract was canceled, Halligen's debts were mounting and his reputation was sinking. His relationship with Dybczak was over, and he was preparing his exit from Washington.

His corporate bank records show that in September, October and November 2008, Halligen drained $800,000 from his D.C. account and wired much of that overseas. He sold the Great Falls house. By November, his Washington bank account was overdrawn by $1,400. And Halligen was gone.

His former friends started looking for him and investigating his finances and background. They contacted the FBI. And they also started filing civil suits.

Aspinall filed suit in Washington to recover his investment in Oakley, and a judge ordered Halligen to pay back $871,000.

Halligen was also sued by another Washington insider, Andre Hollis, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, who had given a toast at the Evermay wedding.

Hollis, a lawyer who once worked as legal counsel to the House of Representatives and as senior adviser to Afghanistan's Ministry of Counter Narcotics, sued Halligen in Fairfax Country Circuit Court for $2.35 million.

Hollis alleged that Halligen hired him as chief executive of Oakley International and that Hollis bought an ownership stake in the company. He said that the investment turned out to be worthless and that Halligen drained the company's accounts. A judge ordered Halligen to pay Hollis more than $5.7 million in damages.

As investigators pursued Halligen, they found yet another surprise. They unearthed documents suggesting that the silver-tongued Brit had actually been born in Ireland.

In November 2009, after a year on the run, Halligen was jailed after being arrested at a luxury hotel in Oxford, England. The bartender there recalled that Halligen had been staying at the hotel for weeks under an alias, with a girlfriend, running up huge bar tabs, buying drinks for the staff and spinning tales of life as a spy.

Staff researcher Jennifer Jenkins and special correspondent Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2012, Andre Hollis, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, John Holmes, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Mark Aspinall, Oakley Intl, Patton Boggs, Special Forces Club, Trafigura

Halligen v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011]

England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions

BAILII

Halligen v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011]

EWHC 1584 (Admin) (21 June 2011)

[2011] EWHC 1584 (Admin)

Neutral Citation Number: [2011] EWHC 1584 (Admin)

Case No: CO/135253/2010

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
21/06/2011

B e f o r e :

LORD JUSTICE LAWS AND MR. JUSTICE STADLEN
____________________

Between:

Kevin Richard Halligen
Appellant

- and -

Secretary of State for the Home Department

-and-

Government of the United States of America
Respondent

Interested Party
____________________

Mr Stephen Vullo and Mr David Patience (instructed by Carter Moore Solicitors) for the Appellant
Mr Ben Watson (instructed by Treasury Solicitors) for the Respondent
Mr Ben Lloyd (instructed by The Crown Prosecution Service) for the Interested Party
Hearing date: 19th April 2011
____________________

Continue Reading... Labels: 2011, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, MI5, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

Kevin Halligen (McCann detective) will be extradited to US

KEVIN HALLIGEN
21 June 2011
Liverpool Echo
   

A businessman whose firm helped look for Madeleine McCann has failed in a last ditch High Court bid to escape extradition over an alleged £1.3m fraud.

Kevin Halligen is now set to stand trial in the US accused of defrauding a London law firm.

It is claimed he took the money to secure the release of Dutch business executives arrested in the Ivory Coast but instead spent it on a mansion.

The 49-year-old’s company, Oakley International, was employed in 2008 by Allerton-born Kate and Gerry McCann to find their three-year-old daughter, who disappeared in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

But after six months, his contract was cancelled by the Find Madeleine Fund after he delivered little to the investigation.

Halligen, whose firm was based in Washington, was arrested in 2009 after months spent evading police.

He was found staying at the plush Old Bank hotel in Oxfordshire, where he was known under a number of aliases.

Halligen would spend most of his evenings getting drunk in the bar, witnesses said, and caused consternation over unpaid bills.

In December last year, Home Secretary Theresa May ordered his extradition to stand trial in America, but lawyers for Halligen challenged the move at London's High Court.

However, his case fell at the first hurdle yesterday when top judges ruled he had left it too late to lodge an appeal against the extradition order.

They also dismissed claims that the tight time limit violated his human rights.

Mr Justice Stadlen concluded: "The court has no jurisdiction to entertain Mr Halligen's appeal."

Kate McCann this month said she was confident that her daughter can be traced after Scotland Yard was called in to review the investigation.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2011, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, MI5, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

SPYMASTER FALLS FOR CONMAN

CITY SPY
16 May 2011
The Evening Standard

OH NO! SPYMASTER FALLS FOR CONMAN

Excerpt

WHAT is about Air Marshall Sir John Walker, ex-spymaster at the Defence Intelligence Service (DIS) and one of the City’s great and the good, and con artists? Last month, Sir John admitted to being duped by convicted fraudster, “trillion dollar conman” Russell King, who is so evasive he is known as Lord Voldemort (the Harry Potter character who cannot be named). First London investment bank sent its adviser Walker to check out King, and apparently found nothing awry in his schemes promising billions in Bahraini investment for the bank, a minerals bonanza in North Korea, and the takeover of Notts County Football Club (with Sven-Goran Eriksson at the helm). The Serious Fraud Office is now investigating this house of cards. Of King, Sir John now admits: “He was good at chat... he was a conman.”

THIS wasn’t the first time Walker had been led astray. In 2003, when he was on the board of private security company Inkerman, Sir John was “pleased to announce” the appointment of Kevin Halligen as CEO of an Inkerman subsidiary (according to Inkerman’s old press release). It was Halligen’s big break into the world of corporate spookery and the release spoke of Halligen’s role on MoD “special projects” (though his expertise was really in, erm, batteries). But doubts about him soon arose. After he left Inkerman, Halligen — by then parading as a full-blown ex-spy — bagged the half-a-million-pound contract to find Madeleine McCann (but allegedly spent most of his time in bars and strip clubs and buying mansions). Now he sits at Her Majesty’s leisure pending extradition to the US on £1.2 million fraud and money-laundering charges for a contract in which he promised to free two captive Trafigura staff in Ivory Coast (the appeal judgment is expected soon).

Continue Reading... Labels: 2011, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, MI5, Sir John Walker, Trafigura

Fresh hope in the hunt for Madeleine McCann

17 April 2011
Fresh hope in the hunt for Madeleine McCann
Sunday Mercury
Ben Goldby


Kate McCann has penned a book about her lost daughter Madeleine to encourage people to come forward with fresh information. The new book, simply titled Madeleine, is due to be published on May 12, which will be the Leicestershire schoolgirl’s eighth birthday.

Among heartbreaking details about life since Madeleine’s disappearance during a family holiday at Praia da Luz, Portugal in May 2007 Kate reveals that she still visits Maddie’s bedroom twice a day. Kate and her husband Gerry, both 42, are desperate to re-ignite the search for their daughter, and hope that the book will jog memories and help create new lines of inquiry in a case that has been cold for years.

Friends say the McCanns are pinning all their hopes on Kate’s story prompting someone to come forward with new information. They also hope to raise funds so that their team of private investigators can continue trying to find Madeleine four years after the little girl disappeared from their holiday apartment as they dined out with friends.

The couple have had bad luck with private investigators. American Kevin Halligen, is alleged to have conned the McCanns out of £300,000 and is currently fighting extradition to the US on other fraud claims.

Their hunt is now being led by two British ex-cops instead. Kate began writing the book five months ago at the family home in Rothley, Leicestershire, while looking after the couple’s six-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie.

Qualified doctor Kate relives the first days after Madeleine vanished in the book, and charts the media storm in the months that followed when Kate and Gerry became suspects in their daughter’s disappearance. She turned down the offer of a ghost writer because she wanted the book to be in her own words. The McCanns hope sales of the book will raise more than £1million for Madeleine’s fund.

The couple have taken successful legal action to prevent the publication in Britain of Portuguese cop Goncalo Amaral’s book about the case, The Truth Of The Lie, in which he repeats his hypothesis that the McCanns were involved.

Since Madeleine disappeared, Kate has given up her part-time position as a GP at a practice in Melton Mowbray, and has spent the last five months working day and night on the new book.

Continue Reading... Labels: FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering

Reopening the wounds

Reopening the wounds
Kate McCann visits Maddie's room twice a day and the pain is raw.But she hopes her book will revive the hunt
16 April 2011
Mail
Natalie Clarke

Earlier this week, Kate McCann signed off the final chapter of her book about her lost daughter, Madeleine. It is now with the publishers, and a rush is on to have the book edited, printed and on sale by the planned publication date of May 12, which will be Madeleine’s eighth birthday. The book, simply entitled Madeleine, gives Kate’s account, in her own words, of her daughter’s disappearance during a family holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007, and the dramatic events that followed.

Four years after Madeleine’s disappearance, there is, sadly, still no prospect of an epilogue to the book anytime soon, answering that heart-rending mystery: Where is Maddie?  As the years have passed, the answer to that question seems more elusive than ever. The trail seemed to go stone-cold long ago, and all new leads appear to be red herring after red herring.

Kate and Gerry McCann are desperate to reignite the search for their daughter, but where do they start?

With Kate’s book, it would seem. Close friends say the McCanns are pinning all their hopes on Kate’s story prompting someone, somewhere, to come forward with new information.

The aim of the book is two-fold: to put Madeleine’s disappearance back in the spotlight, and to raise funds so that the McCanns’ team of private investigators can continue their work in trying to find her.

Reliving those first terrifying days after Madeleine vanished, and charting the dramatic events in the months that followed when even Kate and Gerry became suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, has been an intensely painful experience for Kate.  The tortured look that has been etched on the 42-year-old doctor’s face since Madeleine’s disappearance is still in evidence, and friends say she looks tired, thin and drawn.

Kate began writing the book five months ago on the computer in her study at the family home in Rothley, Leicestershire.  A family friend describes how she would write through the day, while the couple’s six-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, were at school, and then return to her study to write late into the evening after the children had gone to bed.

‘Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl. Our hope is that the book may prompt those who have relevant information (knowingly or not) to come forward and share it with our team.

She turned down the offer of a ghost writer because she wanted the book to be in her own words.

Pouring intense emotion into the book has given Kate a sense of focus, as well as renewed hope that Madeleine will be found.  Meeting publishing deadlines has also given Kate a feeling that she is doing something both positive and purposeful in her struggle to discover what has happened to her hazel-eyed daughter.  The McCanns hope sales of the book will raise more than £1million for Madeleine’s fund. The book’s  launch will be accompanied by several television interviews.

‘Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl,’ Kate writes on the Find Madeleine website.  ‘Our hope is that the book may prompt those who have relevant information (knowingly or not) to come forward and share it with our team.’

The publication of this book will propel the family back onto the world’s front pages and, as Kate herself remarks, they embark on this latest chapter in the Maddie story with very heavy hearts.  The McCanns’ fateful decision to leave Madeleine alone in a Portuguese holiday apartment with their then two-year-old twins, while they dined with friends at a nearby tapas bar, was one of the most controversial stories of the decade.

There were even lingering suspicions, however unfair given that the allegations made against the couple have never been substantiated and the McCanns have been totally exonerated, that they had somehow been involved in their daughter’s disappearance.

But in the months that followed, the Portuguese policeman heading the investigation, Goncalo Amaral, became suspicious that the McCanns were somehow involved in their daughter’s disappearance. There were claims of inconsistencies in the couple’s account of what they did on the night in question, and criticism that Kate didn’t seem ‘emotional’ enough in the wake of what had happened.

Once subjective suspicion and groundless rumour were stripped away, however, Amaral’s ‘case’ against the McCanns was based almost entirely on the evidence of two springer spaniels.  When the police dogs barked after being let loose in the apartment from which Madeleine had gone missing, Amaral saw it as apparent confirmation that they had detected blood and ‘the scent of death’ at the apartment.  Amaral became convinced that Madeleine had died accidentally in the apartment, and that her parents had then staged an elaborate cover-up.  The couple were formally declared ‘arguidos’ — meaning suspects — in September 2007, four months after Madeleine’s disappearance. That ‘arguido’ status was lifted a year later. 

But false suspicions about the McCanns had been stirred, and sadly opprobrium amongst some lingers to this day.  For these reasons, the launch of the book will be low-key. Kate will not be doing any signings because she has serious fears about being subjected to verbal abuse, or even physical attack.    ‘Kate doesn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to have a go at her  during any promotional tour,’ a friend told the Mail. ‘Just writing the book has been emotional enough.’

As an example of the deep unpleasantness the McCanns have to deal with, you have to go no further than an organisation called The Madeleine Foundation, which has a website demanding answers from the McCanns to some 163 questions concerning the case.  The group, which comprises 28 members but claims it has thousands of supporters who have looked at the website, has already written to the McCanns’ publishers, Transworld, requesting answers to its 163 questions and is planning to step up its campaign to coincide with the publication of the book.  Around the time Kate McCann was finishing her book this week, the organisation was taking delivery of 10,000 leaflets entitled ‘What happened to Madeleine McCann: 50 facts about the case that the British media are not telling you.’  It now plans to distribute them to homes and shops across the country. The leaflet is divided into four sections: 1) Major contradictions in the statements of the McCanns and their friends. 2) The highly trained police dogs who detected the scent of a corpse. 3) Strange things the McCanns have said and done. 4) How the McCanns wasted public money on useless private detectives.

In 2009, 30,000 similar leaflets were distributed around the country — including Kate and Gerry’s home town — before the McCanns' lawyers, Carter-Ruck, obtained a High Court undertaking from the group’s secretary, retired solicitor Tony Bennett, to halt the leafleting.  He also agreed to stop sales of a book he had written, entitled What Really Happened To Madeleine McCann: 60 Reasons To Suggest She Was Not Abducted.  ‘Many people subscribe to the view, to one degree or another, that we are not being told the whole truth,’ says Mr Bennett, seemingly oblivious to the pain he is causing the couple.

Just as cruel as The Madeleine Foundation are a number of internet sites established with the sole purpose, it would seem, of smearing the couple. Online comments from the public on such sites are often poisonous in the extreme — vitriol likely to intensify after the book goes on sale.

The McCanns have taken successful legal action to prevent the publication in Britain of Amaral’s book about the case, The Truth Of The Lie, in which he repeats his hypothesis that the McCanns were involved, but key extracts of the book are available online, fuelling the McCanns’ torment still further.

It has, of course, been impossible for Kate and Gerry to lead a normal life after all they have been through.  For the first few years after Madeleine disappeared, Kate was a virtual recluse. She gave up her part-time position as a GP at a practice in Melton Mowbray, closeting herself away in the family’s smart new-build home in a quiet cul-de-sac.  She felt too depressed and anguished to venture far, and found it hard to deal with the stares she would get when she was out and about.  Over the past year or so, however, she has begun to circulate more often. Each morning, she prepares breakfast for the twins before seeing them off to their Roman Catholic primary school.  The school still holds a place for Madeleine, who was enrolled to become a pupil there in September 2007. Such details are a heart-breaking reminder of the little girl the McCanns have lost.  Once the twins are at school, Kate goes for a long run around the country lanes close by. At weekends, she is often seen out and about with the twins in the village, taking them to swimming and dancing lessons at a local leisure centre.  She also sets aside time twice a day to sit quietly in Madeleine’s bedroom, which friends say brings her comfort and solace. The twins sometimes play in the room, but it is off-limits to visitors.  Gerry, 41, works long hours as a heart specialist at a teaching hospital in Leicester, often cycling to work and back.  Most Sundays, the family walk together to Mass at their local Roman Catholic church, where prayers continue to be said for Madeleine’s safe return to her family.

Kate and Gerry do not socialise much these days, but remain close to their friends, David and Fiona Payne, who were part of the group dubbed the ‘Tapas Nine’ after they dined together on the night Madeleine vanished.  Friends say that Kate and Gerry remain close, although the agony of losing Madeleine has inevitably placed strains upon them.  In the past year, Kate has made a couple of trips alone back to Praia da Luz, staying with the local Anglican priest, Haynes Hubbard, and his wife, Susan, who have become close friends. Kate feels closer to her daughter there.

She and Gerry have been bitterly frustrated by the lack of progress made by private detectives.  One particularly inept Spanish outfit, Metodo 3, promised to have Madeleine home by Christmas. That was the Christmas of 2007.

Another detective, Kevin Halligen, is alleged to have conned the McCanns out of £300,000 and is currently fighting extradition to the U.S. on other fraud claims.

But the McCanns are said to be happy with their current team, led by former British police detectives Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley.  Various individuals continue to emerge, claiming to know Madeleine’s whereabouts.

In February, Marcellino Italiano, an Angolan-born nightclub bouncer, claimed she had been snatched by an Algarve-based paedophile ring which smuggled her into America.

To the McCanns’ intense frustration, the Madeleine police files have been officially abandoned.  The couple are calling for the case to be reopened, and have launched an online petition in support of that call, which they are asking supporters to sign. When they have 50,000 signatures on it, they will take their case to the Home Secretary. 

For now, however, they are hoping Kate’s book will succeed where every other attempt to find Madeleine has not, prompting someone finally to come forward with the crucial piece of information that will unlock the mystery.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2011, Find Madeleine Fund, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann

Irish investigator into disappearance of Madeleine McCann up on U.S fraud charges

Irish investigator into disappearance of Madeleine McCann up on U.S fraud charges
7 November 2010
IrishCentral
Cathy Hayes

An Irish man whose company helped with the investigation into the disappearance of Madeline McCann may be extradited to the United States for a $2.1 million fraud.

Kevin Halligen, of Oakley International, was employed by the McCann family in 2008 when their daughter Madeleine went missing from their vacation apartment in Portugal.

Oakley International was paid about $486,701 for its services over a six-month period.

Later it emerged that the 48-year-old businessman Halligen was wanted in the U.S for defrauding a London firm for $2.1 million.

The firm claims that money taken from a Dutch company, Trafigura, as part of a deal to secure the release of executives under arrest in the Ivory Coast, was instead spent on purchases. These included a mansion and a present for Mr Halligen's girlfriend.

He was arrested on November 24, 2009, at his hotel in Oxford, Britain. He was staying there under an assumed name. His assets have now been frozen.

Halligen is now being remanded in custody and awaits a decision from the Home Secretary Theresa May as to whether the extradition will go ahead

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

I’m disappointed in you Home Secretary, says Kate McCann

7 November 2010
Mail
Tracey Kandohla

The mother of missing Madeleine McCann fears Home Secretary Theresa May is failing to act in the search for her.

Dr Kate McCann said she was ‘disappointed’ by Mrs May when they met three months ago.

She said: ‘There is an abductor out there who is free to take another child. Other children are at risk and nothing is being done.’

Mrs McCann, 42, was speaking after she and surgeon husband Gerry launched an online petition to lobby the British and Portuguese governments for a review of the case. [Note: Gerry McCann is NOT a surgeon]

Yesterday, three days after the launch, the petition had been signed by more than 24,000 people.

The McCanns met Mrs May in the hope she would contact the Portuguese authorities over Madeleine, who was three when she vanished from a holiday flat in the Algarve in May 2007 while her parents dined with friends at a tapas bar nearby.

Mrs McCann said:

‘Theresa May said she didn’t want to make any commitment. It was disappointing.

‘I can’t get my head round the Government giving up on Madeleine. Why are missing children not important? They look for terrorists, why can’t they look for child abductors?

‘Door-to-door enquiries need to be done and lots of people still need talking to. Portuguese police say the case will reopen if there is evidence but we have to generate the new evidence.’

Just before the Election in May, the McCanns met David Cameron who said that if he became Prime Minister, he would do what he could to help.

A report by Jim Gamble, of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, is thought to back the McCanns’ demand for a review of all the evidence.

The report was commissioned by the then Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson but not completed until the summer, when Mrs May became Home Secretary.

So far, the Home Office has refused to disclose the report’s recommendations. Mrs McCann, who has five-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, said:

‘There is no reason why the contents can’t be made available to us.

'They say some of it is sensitive but we are Madeleine’s parents, for goodness sake.

We’ve said we will not divulge any of it except to help our investigators.’

Those investigators are paid for by the Find Maddie Fund, which has now dwindled to £300,000 and it is set to dry up within five months.

Portuguese police shelved an 18-month investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance after clearing her parents as formal suspects.

The Home Office said:

‘The Home Secretary has met Kate and Gerry and is deeply sympathetic to their situation.

We will maintain a dialogue with the Portuguese and will continue to liaise with Madeleine’s family.’

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, Find Madeleine Fund, Madeleine McCann, Theresa May

Madeleine hunt businessman may be extradited

Madeleine hunt businessman may be extradited
5 November 2010
Hawick News

A businessman whose firm helped look for Leicestershire girl Madeleine McCann and who is wanted in the US over an alleged £1.3 million fraud has been told that the Home Secretary will decide whether he will be extradited.

The case of Irish national Kevin Halligen, 48, was referred to Theresa May following a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, a court spokesman said.

Halligen, who was remanded in custody, is accused by prosecutors in America of attempting to defraud a London law firm of 2.1 million dollars (£1.32 million). His assets were frozen after his arrest on November 24.

The businessman's firm Oakley International had been employed by Kate and Gerry McCann, of Rothley, for around six months in 2008 to look for their missing daughter.

In all, the Washington-based firm was paid around £300,000 for its services by the McCanns.

Police acting on a request from US law enforcement agencies detained Halligen after finding him in a hotel in Oxford where he had been staying under an assumed name.

The alleged crimes for which he is wanted in the US relate to money taken from a Dutch company, Trafigura, as part of a deal to secure the release of executives under arrest in the Ivory Coast. Instead it was spent on, among other things, a mansion and a gift to his girlfriend, it is alleged.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

Madeleine 'swindler' on FBI rap

5 November 2010
The Daily Mirror

EXTRADITION

A businessman who allegedly conned the Madeleine McCann fund out of cash is to be extradited to the US on money laundering charges.

Kevin Halligen, 48, is accused by the FBI of a £1.2million wire fraud.

He claims to be a private investigator and had been waiting for an extradition hearing date since his arrest last November.

He is also accused of taking £300,000 from the Find Madeline fund after claiming he could use satellite technology to find the missing girl.

Yesterday Westminster magistrates ordered his extradition. Halligen now has four weeks to appeal.

Earlier this week, Kate McCann revealed the fund to find daughter Madeleine may have to close because of a lack of money.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Theresa May, Trafigura

Maddie 'tec boot

5 November 2010
The Sun

A private eye tracked down by The Sun after he allegedly swindled the Madeleine McCann fund out of £300,000 is to be extradited to America.



The FBI wants to question Dublin-born Kevin Halligen, 48, over separate £1.2million fraud claims. Halligen was paid out of the Find Madeleine fund after promising he could use satellite technology to locate Maddie, who went missing aged three in Portugal in 2007. He was arrested last November after we found him in Oxford.

Halligen has four weeks to appeal against the ruling at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, London.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Theresa May, Trafigura

Maddy man fraud probe

5 November 2010
Belfast Telegraph

A man whose business helped look for Madeleine McCann and who is wanted in the US over an alleged £1.3m fraud has been told that the Home Secretary will decide whether he will be extradited. Irish national Kevin Halligen (48), who was remanded in custody, is accused by US prosecutors of attempting to defraud a London law firm of $2.1m (£1.32m). His assets were frozen.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Theresa May, Trafigura

Home Secretary to make decision on alleged McCann fraudster

November 04, 2010
CourtNews UK


A private detective who allegedly conned the McCann family out of £300,000 faces an anxious wait after a judge sent his extradition case to the Home Secretary for a final decision.



Security consultant Kevin Halligen, 49, is fighting extradition to the United States over claims he cheated Dutch company Trafigura out of £1.3million by offering to secure the release of their employees from an Ivory Coast jail.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Ivory Coast, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Theresa May, Trafigura

Maddie 'investigator' awaits extradition decision

04 November 2010
UTV

An Irishman whose firm helped in the search for missing Madeline McCann is waiting to hear if he's to be extradited to the US for an alleged $2.1m fraud.

Oakley International's Kevin Halligen was employed by Kate and Gerry McCann in 2008 to look for their daughter after she went missing from an apartment in Portugal's Algarve.

The company, which is based in Washington, was paid around £300,000 for its services over a six-month period.

But it later emerged the 48-year-old businessman was wanted in America by prosecutors accusing him of attempting to defraud a London law firm of the equivalent of £1.32m.

They claim money taken from Dutch company Trafigura, as part of a deal to secure the release of executives under arrest in the Ivory Coast, was instead spent on purchases including a mansion and a present for Mr Halligen's girlfriend.

He was arrested on November 24 of last year at an Oxford hotel, where he had been staying under an assumed name, and his assets were frozen.

Following Wednesday's hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, Mr Halligen was remanded in custody to await the decision of Home Secretary Theresa May.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Ivory Coast, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

Businessman awaits Home Secretary's decision on extradition

4 November 2010
Press Association
Paula Fentiman

A businessman whose firm helped look for Madeleine McCann and who is wanted in the US over an alleged £1.3 million fraud was told today that the Home Secretary will decide whether he will be extradited.

The case of Irish national Kevin Halligen, 48, was referred to Theresa May following a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, a court spokesman said.

Halligen, who was remanded in custody, is accused by prosecutors in America of attempting to defraud a London law firm of 2.1 million dollars (£1.32 million).

His assets were frozen after his arrest on November 24.

Officers acting on a request from US law enforcement agencies detained Halligen after finding him in a hotel in Oxford where he had been staying under an assumed name.

The alleged crimes for which he is wanted in the US relate to money taken from a Dutch company, Trafigura, as part of a deal to secure the release of executives under arrest in the Ivory Coast.

Instead it was spent on, among other things, a mansion and a gift to his girlfriend, it is alleged.

The businessman's firm Oakley International had been employed by Kate and Gerry McCann for around six months in 2008 to look for their missing daughter.

In all, the Washington-based firm was paid around £300,000 for its services by the McCanns.

A Home Office spokesman said the request for Halligen's extradition was issued on November 25 last year by the US government.

The Home Secretary now has two months in which to make a decision.

Halligen has been remanded in custody.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Ivory Coast, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

Maddie 'investigator' awaits extradition decision

04 November 2010
Press Association

An Irishman whose firm helped in the search for missing Madeline McCann is waiting to hear if he's to be extradited to the US for an alleged $2.1m fraud.

Oakley International's Kevin Halligen was employed by Kate and Gerry McCann in 2008 to look for their daughter after she went missing from an apartment in Portugal's Algarve.

The company, which is based in Washington, was paid around £300,000 for its services over a six-month period.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Theresa May, Trafigura

Private detective accused of ripping off Madeleine McCann fund wanted in the US over alleged £1.3million fraud

21 September 2010
Daily Mirror

A private detective accused of ripping off the Madeleine McCann fund is also wanted in the US over an alleged £1.3million fraud, it was revealed yesterday.

Kevin Halligen, 49, is being sought by the FBI for allegedly conning UK law firm Waterson and Hicks out of the sum by claiming he could help free two staff of a client, oil company Trafigura, jailed in the Ivory Coast over a 2006 chemical spill.

Westminster magistrates remanded Halligen, from Surrey, in custody until November 3.

Note: Original title to article:  "Private cop '£1.3m scam' "

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Trafigura

Kevin Halligen's full Extradition hearing begins, 20 September 2010

20 September 2010
The McCann Files
Nigel More


Kevin Halligen's full Extradition hearing went ahead today; however, there is a further hearing on 3/11/10 at 10 am to finish it. Source: City of Westminster Magistrates' Court

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Trafigura