Madeleine McCann disappeared from her parents holiday apartment in the village of Praia da Luz, Algarve, Portugal, on 3rd May 2007. Between 5th and 12th May 2007 - two top people from Control Risks Group were dispatched to Praia da Luz, namely, Kenneth Farrow and Michael Keenan. Farrow was the ex-head of The Economic Crime Unit in the City of London Police and Keenan was an ex-Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police with specialist fraud and investigative experience. No-one knew how they could help find a missing child, but Jane Tanner admits to speaking to them before she identified Robert Murat as the man with a child she claimed to have seen on 3 May.
When it was revealed that the McCanns were effectively running a parallel investigation, the news led to deep concern amongst the authorities in Portugal, where it is illegal for private detectives to become involved in criminal cases. A source close to the McCann's legal team confirmed the involvement of Control Risks Group but insisted it was simply providing advice in the hunt for Madeleine rather than becoming actively involved in searches in Portugal. He said: "You can assume that they are doing some things that the Portuguese police can't do. Nothing illegal is being done in Portugal."
Antonio Martins, president of the Association of Portuguese Judges, told the 24 Horas newspaper: "It is still up to the state to carry out criminal investigation. That kind of activity has no legal standing. Anything that results from private investigation has no substance."
The judge added that Mr and Mrs McCann, both 39, from Rothley, Leicestershire, could be charged with "obstruction of justice" if prosecutors found evidence of a parallel investigation. At the time the couple were official suspects in the disappearance of their daughter from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.
A high-ranking officer in the Polícia Judiciária, which was investigating the disappearance of Madeleine shortly before her fourth birthday, said that the investigators could be detained if they were found operating in Portugal. "If they come here they will be running a serious risk of being arrested," he said.
In September 2007, Brian Kennedy commissioned a firm of private detectives based in Barcelona to conduct an investigation parallel to the one being run by the Portuguese police. But his choice showed how dangerous it is when powerful and wealthy businessmen try to play detective. It wasn't long before the firm
Metodo 3 were making the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In January 2008, Irishman Martin Smith made a second statement to the Irish police (Garda) in which he stated that Brian Kennedy and private investigators believed to be from CRG had visited him at his home in Ireland in an attempt to get him to do an e-fit but that he had refused. Just recently however, e-fits have surfaced which it is claimed were created in conjunction with Mr Smith and Oakley International, another PI firm headed by Dubliner Kevin Halligen, also engaged by Kennedy to investigate the mystery of Madeleine's disappearance.
The Sunday Times recently ran an article claiming that Oakley was prevented from releasing the e-fits and their final report some five years ago because of a confidentiality clause in their contract with Kennedy and the McCanns. A Madeleine Fund source responded that, “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.”
