Pure speculaton on my part - as I don't profess to know much about this 'area' of the case - but could it be that the 2 Detectives formed a company simply because rather than get into the realms of PAYE, Nat Ins. Holiday entitlement etc etc (which the Fund would have to get involved in if they were employed directly as individuals) - as a self-employed partnership/company (whateva) ' they would just have to submit an invoice for payment - full stop. So maybe it was just for expediency and to keep the costs of the fund down? Who knows?
Edgar and Cowley have not 'disappeared', they have been 'stood down' for the time being to prevent the possibility of confusion or duplication whilst the SY investigation proceeds. All their files were passed on to SY - as I'm sure you know. So nothing sinister there - despite your efforts to suggest otherwise.
If the work carried out by the private investigators paid for by Madeleine's fund was as ineffective as some suggest ~ why on earth are NSY incorporating some of it into their investigation?
Quote from DCI Redwood's Panorama interview - He says that one big advantage that Operation Grange has is that for the first time it has access to
all of the available evidence - and has it all in the one place.
“We are drawing together information from
three separate sources,” says DCI Redwood. “The legal enforcement bodies within Portugal, the UK enforcement agencies of which the police are the main part, and
also and unusually the private investigation world which as we know is an element that was used by Mr and Mrs McCann in the search for their daughter."
Pressed on why he thinks this is unique, DCI Redwood answers: “Because at no time before have those three elements been drawn together in one place. And so what we’ve done over the past number of months is to bring to one place all those pieces of the jigsaw.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/panorama-maddie.html