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@the_great_she_elephant wrote:

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.

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from the Sunday times

The McCanns were also understandably wary of Oakley after allegations that the chairman, Kevin Halligen, failed to pass on money paid by the fund to Exton’s team. Halligen denies this. He was later convicted of fraud in an unrelated case in the US.

The McCann fund source said the Oakley report was passed on to new private investigators after the contract ended, but that the firm’s work was considered “contaminated” by the financial dispute.

He said the fund wanted to continue to pursue information about the man seen by Tanner, and it would have been too expensive to investigate both sightings in full — so the Smith E-Fits were not publicised. It was also considered necessary to threaten legal action against the authors.

“[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,” said the source.

A statement released by the Find Madeleine fund said that “all information privately gathered during the search for Madeleine has been fully acted upon where necessary” and had been passed to Scotland Yard.

It continued: “Throughout the investigation, the Find Madeleine fund’s sole priority has been, and remains, to find Madeleine and bring her home as swiftly as possible.”

Insight: Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert

She El, If they knew it wasn't Gerry why would they not at least follow the leads that their PI's came up with in order to find Maddie ?