McCann search businessman in court

22 July 2010
Bray People
Halligen's firm had been employed by the McCanns to look for Madeleine
An Irish businessman whose firm helped look for Madeleine McCann and who is wanted in the US over an alleged 1.6 million euro fraud is due to face an extradition hearing.

Irish national Kevin Halligen, 48, is accused by prosecutors in America of attempting to defraud a London law firm of 2.1 million dollars (1.64 million euro)

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 357,000 euro for its services by the McCanns.

The defendant's 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 extradition hearing will take place at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Ireland, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, MI5, Money Laundering, No. Ireland, Oakley Intl, Trafigura

McCANN SEARCH BUSINESSMAN FACES U.S. EXTRADITION HEARING

21 July 2010
Press Association National Newswire


A businessman whose firm helped look for Madeleine McCann and who is wanted in the US over an alleged £1.3 million fraud will face an extradition hearing today.

Irish national Kevin Halligen, 48, is accused by prosecutors in America of attempting to defraud a London law firm of 2.1 million dollars (£1.32 million).

Continue Reading... Labels: 2010, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Ireland, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, MI5, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Trafigura

FBI hunt £300K Maddie conman

23 November 2009 
Scottish Daily Record 
Craig McDonald
Secret agent fantasist vanishes with cash after promise of help

A self-styled secret agent has pocketed £300,000 from the Madeleine McCann fund, it's been claimed. Businessman and "security consultant" Kevin Halligen, 50, was paid thousands to find the missing girl - but allegedly failed to pass the money on to private detectives carrying out the work for him. A McCann family friend said: "He offered to provide satellite images which could help the case - but all he came up with was something off Google Earth. "He acted as if he were a James Bond-style spy. He promised the Earth but it came to nothing."

The FBI have now been called in to investigate Halligen, who is also wanted by America's justice department over fraud allegations. It's also claimed he bigamously married US government lawyer Maria Dybczak two years ago in Washington.

Undercover Halligen, born in Dublin, came to England in the 1970s and claims links to the shadowy world of intelligence. He once wrote of himself: "Kevin has operational experience in Northern Ireland and the Middle East and retains close links with special forces and the international government security community." 

Madeleine had been missing for a year when Brian Kennedy, the millionaire who donated funds for the search, contacted Halligen's firm, Oakley International, via former police head of undercover operations Henri Exton.

It's claimed Halligen "seemed impressive" at initial meetings and offered the McCanns undercover surveillance and intelligence gathering in Portugal. A contract was agreed with Oakley International - but former colleagues say Halligen had no experience of such investigations. The actual detective work was carried out by others, including Exton, who produced reports pointing to new leads. Halligen was supposed to provide technical data, such as satellite imagery from contacts in Washington.

The contract ran out in October last year and was not renewed. Halligen's company had been paid £500,000 but the contractors who did the work say they're owed more than £300,000. Last night, the McCanns' spokesman, Clarence Mitchell said: "Oakley International was contracted to help with the search for Madeleine. "Due diligence was carried out at every stage and payment was only made for work properly carried out. "It was only towards the end of the six-month contract that question marks were raised."

The McCann family friend said: "He had this sense of cloak and dagger. The McCanns found him hard to deal with because he was forever in another country and using different phones." Exton called in the FBI, who are now hunting the businessman. He is said to owe more than £3million to a string of creditors. Halligen was last spotted with a girlfriend at the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, Somerset.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2009, Brian Kennedy, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Henri Exton, Ireland, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Money Laundering, No. Ireland, Oakley Intl, Special Forces Club, Trafigura

Private detective fleeced Maddie fund of £300,000

23 November 2009
Daily Mail
Neil Sears 


A 'Walter Mitty' private investigator who claimed to be an experienced secret agent was paid £300,000 from the funds raised to try to find Madeleine McCann. Thousands of members of public donated money to Gerry and Kate McCann's fund after their three-year-old daughter went missing during a holiday in Portugal in May 2007. Now it has emerged that a sizeable portion of that money was paid to self-proclaimed security consultant Kevin Halligen, 50, a Briton who boasted that secret service contacts in Washington DC could provide satellite images of Portugal from the night Madeleine disappeared.

In fact, it is claimed, the only satellite picture he produced came from the publicly available Google Earth website - and late last year he disappeared from Washington after the U.S. Department of Justice issued a warrant for his arrest over an alleged £1million fraud.

The McCanns' MP, Stephen Dorrell, said: 'This man clearly saw a vulnerable family going through a terrible ordeal, and the only thing he was focused on was that there were people offering money to help find Madeleine.' A source close to the McCanns said: 'Kate and Gerry are doctors from Leicestershire, they aren't experts in private investigations. Their millionaire benefactor Brian Kennedy helped check this guy out, and he seemed kosher. 'But some of us thought the way Halligen changed mobile phone every day out of an obsession with secrecy smacked of Walter Mitty. 'Now he's looking like some sort of fraudster. It's obviously massively upsetting. The bottom line is that there's still a little girl missing, the parents are desperate and they want to use the donated money to employ the best available people to find her.'

Embarrassingly, the hefty payout to Halligen - who was initially due to be paid £500,000 for his work - came after the McCanns became disenchanted with Spanish detective agency Metodo 3, another private investigations outfit which promised more than it could deliver.

Halligen came into contact with the McCanns 18 months ago, a year after their daughter disappeared from their holiday villa in Praia da Luz on the Algarve. He claimed his firm, Oakley International, would be able to provide an undercover surveillance and intelligence gathering service in Portugal, and also provide satellite images of the area involved and records of telephone calls made on the night Madeleine disappeared.

Halligen subcontracted much of the work to other firms, and some of it was carried out to the McCanns' satisfaction. But later it emerged that he had not been paying the sub-contractors - and was instead apparently lavishing the cash on first-class flights, luxury hotels and chauffeur-driven cars for himself. He was never paid the final £200,000 he had requested. The McCanns severed contact with him a year ago. But Halligen's name has now emerged because of his apparent flight from claims that he defrauded Dutch firm Trafigura of £1million after it hired him to help secure the release of two executives arrested in the Ivory Coast.

When suspicions arose that he had spent the money from Trafigura on a luxury house, official inquiries began. A host of allegations were made against him in The Sunday Times yesterday. He worked in electronics but suggested to colleagues, that he had worked for MI5, MI6, and the CIA. He allegedly boasted that he had extensive 'operational experience in Northern Ireland and the Middle East' and had close links with secret services and special forces.

Last night, the McCanns' official spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said money was only ever paid to Oakley International for work completed. The first year of accounts for the Find Madeleine fund revealed donations had totalled £1.8million, and that total outgoings were £815,000.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2009, Brian Kennedy, FBI, Find Madeleine Fund, Fraud, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Metodo3, MI5, MI6, Money Laundering, Oakley Intl, Special Forces Club, Trafigura

Trafigura's Would-Be Saviour in Dock

1 October 2009 
Intelligence Online

Hired to spring the chief executive of Trafigura from jail in Abidjan, the Oakley company now finds itself under attack by the trader’s lawyer. Founder of the private security firm Red Defense International, Britain’s Kevin Halligen had until the first of September to respond to a suit filed by lawyer Mark Aspinall that called upon him to pay USD 1.3 million. He let the deadline pass and was thereby declared in default by the U.S. district court for the District of Colombia.

Intelligence Online reported in its 576th issue how Aspinall recruited Halligen, who took part indirectly in a MI5 operation in Northern Ireland, to help organize the release of his client, Claude Dauphin, founder of Trafigura, from the Maca prison in Abidjan. Dauphin had been arrested in Ivory Coast following the unloading of toxic waste by the vessel Probo Koala that had been chartered by Trafigura.

The rescue operation mounted by Red Defense, which involved using a Falcon corporate jet and South African mercenaries, was finally cancelled in February, 2007. Dauphin was released a few months later against payment of USD 198 million.

Following that episode, Aspinall and Halligen remained in contact and, in September, 2007, the lawyer invested USD 500,000 in two firms founded by Halligen in the United States, Oakley International Group (OIG) and Oakley Strategic Services (OSS). 

Six months later, he lent USD 250,000 to Halligen to replenish the coffers of the two firms, whose managing director was the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, Andre Hollis. The latter is also a lawyer in the firm Van Scoyoc Associates.

Despite his investments, Aspinall never had access to the books of OIG or OSS, nor was his loan repaid. Under pressure from the lawyer to make good on his promise, Halligen instead left for Italy last December, and has yet to return.

His two companies declared bankruptcy and Aspinall, the only stakeholder who remained creditworthy, had to pay off their debts. To recover money he lost in the venture, Aspinall filed suit (1-09-cv-00655) against Halligen. But even if he wins his case, he probably won't get his money back.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2009, Andre Hollis, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Kevin Halligen, Mark Aspinall, MI5, No. Ireland, Oakley Intl, Trafigura

Red Defence in Red Zone

9 October 2008 
Intelligence Online 

An affiliate of Red Defence International, a firm headed by Britain’s Kevin Halligen, the investigative concern Oakley International Group was hired in March, 2008 to help find Madeline McCann, the three-year-old British child who vanished in May, 2007 from a hotel on the Portuguese coast. In late August, the Find Madeline Fund, which bankrolls the search for the child, suddenly cut all links with Oakley International, officially for “inadequate results.”It wasn’t the first time that companies owned by Halligen, who took part in MI 5 operations in Northern Ireland, have encountered problems with their customers.

In September, 2006, Red Defence was retained by the Trafigura trading group after two of its senior executives, Claude Dauphin and Jean-Pierre Valentini, were arrested and clapped behind bars in Ivory Coast. A month previously, the Probo Koala, a ship chartered by Trafigura, had discharged toxic waste in dumps in the port of Abidjan. Red Defence, whose contact with Trafigura was lawyer Marc Aspinall, pulled out all the stops to secure the release of Dauphin and Valentini.

Through the firm WatchWood, Red Defence leased a Falcon business jet from the South African group Aerotrade, headed by Fred Rutte, and kept it on stand-by for months, at great expense. Red Defence additionally approached a private British security concern Oceans Five run by John Nash to ask that it provide commandos to mount an operation to rescue Dauphin and Valentini from Maca prison in Abidjan. The operation, initially planned for mid-January, 2007, was put back on several occasions.

Trafigura, which was negotiating simultaneously with the Ivory Coast authorities for the release of its executives, was worried about the constant postponements and the prohibitive cost of the operation. It finally cut all ties with Red Defence in February, 2007. Shortly afterwards, Dauphin and Valentini were released after the payment of USD 198 million that was destined to cover the cost of a clean-up of waste from Probo Koala.

Subsequently, Trafigura’s lawyer, Aspinall, demanded that sub-contractors hired by Red Defence reimburse some of the money paid to them , threatening legal proceedings. Following that setback, Halligen moved to the United States and founded Oakley Security Services, whose initials OSS evoked those of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA. He re-named the firm Oakley International Group and teamed up with the lobbying concern Patton Boggs run by Thomas Boggs.

Continue Reading... Labels: 2008, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Kevin Halligen, Madeleine McCann, Mark Aspinall, MI5, No. Ireland, Oakley Intl, Patton Boggs, Red Defence, Trafigura