Missing Madeleine McCann’s parents Gerry and Kate had to pay out nearly £7,000 for libel battle with former Portuguese police chief
- Gerry and Kate McCann lost a 13-year libel battle with Goncalo Amaral last year
- He made ‘unfounded’ claims they were involved in Madeleine’s disappearance
- The couple had to pay out £6,695 using funds raised to search for their daughter
- Madeleine went missing aged three during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann Gerry and Kate had to pay out nearly £7,000 – using funds raised to search for their daughter – for a libel battle with a former Portuguese police chief.
The couple lost the 13-year battle in September with Goncalo Amaral, who made ‘unfounded’ claims they were involved in their daughter’s disappearance.
Accounts for Madeleine’s Fund, a not-for-profit company, revealed it paid £6,695 in legal costs relating to ‘a legal action in Portugal brought by Gerald and Kate McCann’.
Meanwhile, the latest accounts also show Madeleine’s Fund received £3,498 from sales of Kate’s book titled ‘Madeleine’ in the previous year, and the fund has £970,767 in cash and assets.
Kate and Gerry McCann, parents to missing girl Madeleine McCann, had to pay out nearly £7,000 for a libel battle with a former Portuguese police chief
Madeleine, who went missing aged three during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007, has a fund set up in her name called Madeleine’s Fund which is used to search for her
Madeleine’s Fund was set up to ‘secure the safe return’ of Gerry and Kate’s daughter, who was three years old when she vanished during a holiday to Portugal in 2007.
According to The Mirror, The McCanns sued Amaral for libel over claims made in his book, Maddie: The Truth About The Lie, and in 2015 a Lisbon court ordered him to pay the couple £440,000 in damages.
However, the next year an appeal court overturned the decision, and in 2017 the supreme court found against Madeleine’s parents. They then took the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The McCanns sued Goncalo Amaral, pictured, for libel over claims made in his book, Maddie: The Truth About The Lie
Gerry and Kate have maintained that they only took action against Amaral after his ‘unfounded claims were having a detrimental impact on the search for Madeleine’.
In 2020, 45-year-old paedophile Christian Brueckner was named the prime suspect over Madeleine’s disappearance by authorities in Germany, where Brueckner is imprisoned. He denies any involvement in the McCann’s missing daughter.
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