Nov 23 2009
Liza WilliamsLiverpool Echo
A businessman hired to find Madeleine McCann has allegedly kept up to £300,000 meant to pay investigators. It has been reported that British security consultant, Kevin Halligen, 50, failed to pass the money on to private detectives who did the work for him. Around £500,000 was paid to his firm, Oakley International, by the Find Madeleine fund. Halligen is said to have offered to provide satellite photos from the night Maddie – whose mother Kate is from Allerton – vanished to the family, but failed to do so. He is now reportedly wanted in the USA after an alleged £1.3m fraud. However he has not been arrested because authorities do not know where in the world he is.
The Madeleine fund hired Oakley International in 2007, but £100,000 was withheld after the firm allegedly failed to carry out agreed work, and the contract was not renewed in October last year. Private investigators, including Henri Exton, a former national head of undercover operations for the British police, found it harder and harder to get their fees from Halligen. Mr Exton claims he is owed more than £100,000 for work he did on the Madeleine case.
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