Maddie's Fund

Maddie's Fund

The following is taken from the Madeleine Fund.

The Directors of this Fund are

Kate McCann

Gerry McCann

Brian Kennedy - Kate McCanns uncle

Jon Corner - A close friend of the McCanns

Edward Smethurst - The lawyer to another Brian Kennedy a businessman who has backed the McCanns financially.

Michael Linnet (presumably also a friend as the Fund Directors have always in the main consisted of family and friends)

The Fund states that the above persons have appropriate, legal, business, and charitable experience.

For the record - The Madeleine Fund is not a charity.

The objects of the Fund are listed below.  One of them being to provide financial assistance to Madeleine's family.

I have always understood that should the objects of the Fund be met, then the balance of monies in the Fund would then be given to a missing person charity or charities, and the Madeleine Fund would cease to be.

If I am reading correctly that is not the case at all.

From the FAQ's Section of the Madeleine Fund site (listed below)

(3) Why is Madeleine's Fund not registered as a Charity?

Because Madeleine's Fund is currently focussed on searching for one child only, Madeleine McCann it cannot register as a charity. However in the future if the objects are fulfilled and subsequently changed to concentrate on multiple similar cases, it may then be possible to acquire charitable status.

So the McCanns if the objects are fulfilled have no intention of closing the Madeleine Fund, it would appear to be their intention to continue with it.

And who might then be the Directors of such a company, surely the family and friends do so now as it is for Madeleine? Are these people, the McCanns included, happy to continue with the Fund and happy not to receive any remuneration for doing so?

The Fund objects clearly would be quite different if such an event as the current objects being fulfilled were achieved and would surely then not include financially assisting the McCanns?

I can see no reason either why the Fund has stated that in such circumstances (objects being fulfilled, and the necessary changes made etc) that it is ONLY a possibility they will be able to achieve charitable status?

As the Madeleine case has been re-opened by the Portuguese Police and the Metropolitan Police in the UK has also a £multi million investigation going on paid for by UK taxpayers, and the McCanns financially I am sure as a family do not require to be maintained by the Fund to help search for their missing daughter, it would be rather nice if they sought now to help others, rather than wait to meet the current objectives, which quite frankly and realistically have little chance of being met - 'her safe return?'

If others being assisted by this Fund is dependent on the objects at present being met, we can forget it as far as I can see. 

Rightly or wrongly much controversy surrounds the Madeleine Fund with the public it would appear losing faith in as to how the monies are being spent, to such an extent that there is talk that some are requesting their donations be returned.

The Fund seems to be doing Madeleine, the case of her disappearance more harm than good.

Perhaps in light of two police forces in two separate countries now investigating the disappearance of young Madeleine - not investigating abduction perse - but investigating her disappearance, and at huge cost, it would be a good time for this Fund to be wound up?

The McCanns have over the past six years repeatedly said that the Fund was running out of monies and made appeals for donations, this despite £m's having been donated, some of which was used to not search for Madeleine but in legal costs, and to pay a spokesperson (£70,000 per year) press agencies too, several teams of lawyers also at great cost, private detectives, dodgy, but still needing paid.

How do they propose to continue when the current 'objects' are met, and when dealing with the families of other missing children?   How do they propose to then raise funds?

Which private detectives would they use to search for other missing children - would they retain Dave Edgar?  Would Clarence Mitchell organise press campaigns to highlight the plight of these other missing persons?  What sort of legal team would they require, if any?

Or, is that not the type of assistance the Madeleine Fund would be offering others?  Who knows!

Do they plan to 'fund raise' and then simply donate to missing person charities?

Probably they haven't looked that far ahead, and probably they know that the likelihood of the Funds present objects being met are more than remote, so no need to look to a future Fund with new objectives, but to just keep plodding along plugging the present one, after all as Gerry keeps telling us - 'There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Madeleine has been harmed.'

Being apart from her family doesn't count then I take it?  We are to believe an almost 4 year old child was torn from her family by a gang of paedophiles, and she has suffered no harm? Missing six years, soon to be seven, with not a trace of her to be found.  Not a single clue or lead from the six years of the McCann private investigation financed by the Fund, which is financed in the main by public donations.

And talking of which with Christmas looming, will there be an appeal for funds to search for their daughter, by the McCanns? - (Like the Queens Speech, we have come to expect it. )  

Surely not, not with a £multi-million investigation by the Met ongoing, an investigation which David Cameron I believe has stated will be financed for as long as it takes, the monies from his special fund, set aside for this case, this purpose, limitless?

Which raises another question - Why do the McCanns still require the services of such formidable legal teams who require to be paid from the Fund?

Do they still expect, or fear, after more than six years since their daughter vanished, to be arrested at some point, as their 'fighting fund' was set up to finance such an occurrence was it not?

Fund raising - It's a funny old business!  

Madeleine's Fund