My understandng is that Martin smith and his wife both made statements to the Portuguese Police shortly after Madeleine's disappearence.

A month later, after seeing video of Gerry McCann carrying his son from a plane he stated that the man he saw could well have been Gerry. In one article he is reported to have said he was 60% to 80% certain.

As far as I know he never ammended his police statement, so, to  whom did he give this added information - to the private investigation team?

lf that was the case then  there might well be one very simple and  obvious reason why the McCanns did not want it made public - because they knew it couldn't possibly have been Gerry and they felt- quite rightly  that airing it would only muddy the waters and give more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.

Remember, the police ALREADY KNEW about the sighting and had discounted it because they were concentrating on  the man Jane Tanner saw was the most likely suspect.