The hunt for Madeleine McCann CONTINUES as Home Office approves Met Police’s funding

The investigation into Madeleine McCann has been allocated further funding 

The hunt for Madeleine McCann will continue after the Metropolitan Police Service was granted more funds to continue the 11-year-long search.

A representative for the Home Office said: ‘The Government remains committed to the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Operation Grange).

‘We have briefed the Metropolitan Police Service that its application for Special Grant funding for Operation Grange will be granted.’

Detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann applied for more funding for the search in February.

Government funding for the investigation has historically been agreed every six months, with £154,000 being granted from October last year until the end of March. 

More than £11 million has been spent so far on the probe to find the missing girl, who vanished from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007, aged three. 

The exact figure allocated for the ongoing investigation is not yet known.

Madeleine, three, vanished from an apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007 while her parents were eating tapas with friends at a restaurant nearby.

She would now be nearly 15.

Operation Grange has been one of the longest, most high-profile and costly police investigations in history.

Last week it was revealed Madeleine's parents have set aside almost £750,000 to fund a private search if police stop looking for their missing daughter

Last week it was revealed Madeleine’s parents have set aside almost £750,000 to fund a private search if police stop looking for their missing daughter

More than £11 million has been spent so far on the probe to find the missing girl, who vanished from the family's holiday apartment (pictured) in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007

More than £11 million has been spent so far on the probe to find the missing girl, who vanished from the family’s holiday apartment (pictured) in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007

Launched in May 2011, officers have sifted (and translated) 40,000 documents produced by Portuguese police who conducted the initial investigation, and by the eight teams of private detectives who have worked on the case.

Some 600 ‘persons of interest’ have been examined and ‘sightings’ of Madeleine — in Brazil, India, Morocco and Paraguay, on a German plane and in a New Zealand supermarket — assessed.  

The Portuguese investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance was criticised by the British authorities as being not fit for purpose.

Scotland Yard began an investigative review into the disappearance in 2011, on the orders of then-Prime Minister David Cameron. 



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