McCanns will not use Madeleine fund to pay legal fees
LONDON (AFP) — The parents of British toddler Madeleine McCann, named as formal suspects in her disappearance, will not pay their legal fees from a fund set up for her search, a family spokesman said Wednesday.
The fund has raised over one million pounds but Gerry and Kate McCann, will not dip into it, he said.
"They have decided not to seek to use those funds for their legal support," family spokesman David Hughes said.
Madeleine McCann, then aged three, vanished from the family's holiday apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve in Portugal on May 3 as her parents ate an evening meal with friends in a restaurant just metres away.
Gerry and Kate McCann flew back to Britain with their two-year-old twins Sunday after spending nearly four months based in Portugal coordinating a search for their daughter.
They were named as formal suspects by Portuguese police on Friday.
The couple have hired London-based law firm Kingsley Napley, whose past clients include former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet and Barings Bank rogue trader Nick Leeson.
On Friday, media reports said that fund organisers were looking at whether it could help pay for the couple's legal defence.
But Hughes said: "Gerry and Kate's view is that if they take money from the fund it might be that 90 percent of people who made donations aren't bothered about it.
"But if 10 percent of people are bothered about it, they don't want to upset them.
"They want to take the controversy out of the situation."
