According to their own official website, Rosamund McCarthy and Philip Kirkpatrick of Bates Wells & Braithwaite (London) LLP were involved with setting up Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned within 48 hours and helping to present its launch live on BBC and Sky TV. That in itself isn't all that surprising, afterall Tapas Group member, Rachael Mampilly worked in a similar capacity herself, having traded in her Corporate Tax lawyer role at Richard Butlers FD, advising on Pyramid fundraising schemes for charities for a job at Equity FD, sourcing Financial Directors for entrepreneurial companies; so she at least was prepared for a crisis. And we know now that Robert Murat's friend in Exeter, Elizabeth Cook (wife of Ian C Cook) had contracts with Sky TV and the Press Association as Court Artist. Things can happen quickly if you have connections.

What's more unusual is that Bates Wells & Braithwaite should represent Cancer Research UK and Kevin Halligen's previous employer at Inkerman, Sir Richard Ryder should be Chairman of the Institute of Cancer Research - key partners to the charity. So not only is Sir Richard Ryder a friend and colleague of Dame Pauline Neville-Jones of UK Defense agency, Qinetiq (pronounced kinetic) and Sarah Hogg (investor in Brian Kennedy's Double Glazing projects and Control Risks Group) - all of whom feature in Halligen's career - he also shares interests with the legal representatives of Madeleine Fund, Bates Wells & Braithwaites. It's the old school tie network at its most scholarly and most tightly knotted.

But Sir Richard is not the only one with crossover Charity/Defence interests, the lady who set up the fund, Rosamund McCarthy is also a respected and committed member of NCVO Advisory Committee on Couner Terrorism 2007 - making Halligen's work on the Minerva Programme for Inkerman and Qinetiq (risk assessment and threat management) all the more conspicuous.

In fact the man who The Times alleges put Halligen's name forward for the Special Forces Club, Major John Holmes is likely to have worked alongside legal advisors like Rosamund McCarthy during the consultancy stages of SOE and Project Unicorn - both of which focused on the role played by Counter-Terrorism within Civil Society and its effect upon the corporate sector. Holmes had previously served as Special Operations Liaison Officer at the British Embassy in Washington DC.

The good news for Clarence Mitchell and the Conservative Party is that Rosamund is particularly interested in the inter-relationship between political activities, campaigning and charitable status.

Inkerman Director, Richard Ryder - previous employer of Kevin Halligen.

We might also note that the first FindMadeline.com (with the wrong spelling of Madeleine's name) had been registered in the Washington area before being handed across to the McCann family several days later - all of which suggests that Madeleine's plight was reappropriated with lightning speed. The details of the person/persons who registered the domain on May 10th 2007, were protected by 'Domains By Proxy' - a privacy service offered in the US and partly owned by Go Daddy! The registry details have since been altered. The service at this time was especially popular with charities and government funded bodies. However, the general belief at the time was that the domain had been registered by cybersquatters who saw a commercial opportunity develop.

It's also interesting to note that Esther McVey - friend of Kate McCann and Conservative MP for Wirral had similarly campaigned on behalf of Cancer Research. McVey's friend, Emma Loach, who produced the Madeleine Documentary for ITV also got her first big break a Channel 4 documentary called: Children Fighting Cancer.

The man who eventually replaced McVey as a Fund Director, millionaire property developer and lawyer, Edward Smethurst is an Ambassador for Cancer Research UK in the North of England as well as being the youngest ever Chairman of the Law Society’s commerce & industry group.

Smethurst is also a senior legal adviser at British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), who at 30 is by far the youngest person to take up the position - an agency that collaborates with Gerry McCann's COMARE on a routine basis (COMARE played a vital role in exonerating BNFL Sellafield in the Seascale affair).

As has already been reported, there is credible evidence that aid money from famine relief efforts is used routinely to buy arms. And whilst there's no indication of any such deals being conducted here - there's no reason why should a campaign set up in response to Madeleine's disappearence could not play a role in the advancing security issues closer to home, especially with this press-related nonesense about Arabs and Gerry's pitching of cross border policing and extended DNA profiling during the early stages of their campaign.

As it stands, Kevin Halligen has not been successfully prosecuted on any of the fraud or laundering charges he faces: he is innocent until proven guilty, but it is inevitable that speculation about Halligen will lead to the broader discussion of money-laundering, and charities and non-profit organisations being conduits in that process. There's nothing new here, the Home Office already provides sufficient operational guidance on the subject and advises the British Charity Commission on how to handle cases where a terrorist or organised criminal network is suspected. State sponsored terrorism is a little bit harder a nut to crack, but will often involve a 'Politically Exposed Person' (or PEP) and the charity may just be a link in the transaction. Some of the most famous recent cases were the Nigerian Abacha case, in which large sums of money were pushed through Swiss and Jersey Accounts and Institutions (the case also featured Watchwood Ltd, the company used by Halligen and Trafigura). Other cases of note are the Mark Thatcher/Equatorial Guinea scandal and the case of Abdurahman Alamoudi - who used the SAAR Foundation in a plot to assasinate a Saudi ruler.

That Madeleine went missing during such a momentous period (just a few weeks prior to the EU Summit in which the framework to the Lisbon Treaty was agreed - and later signed) makes anything possible and makes the whole Find Madeleine campaign vulnerable to abuse.

Money laundering does, however, take many forms. Some are apt to describe the money being pumped into the Conservative Party by Lord Ashcroft as 'laundered'. Others describe Labour's use of the Unions as a way of laundering the money paid by British Taxpayers into Party Donations in advance of general elections (Brown gave £2.8 million to Union Modernisation funds in September 2008, just before he thought of calling an election). Labour grants the unions £10 million in government money and they promptly donate £9 million to the Labour Party - that's how the world turns. Funneling contributions is nothing new. In 2007, the BNP were also being investigated over claims of spying and money-laundering. The UKIP MEP, Tom Wise was also investigated on similar charges of laundering. It's a fairly non-specific term ina fairly non-specific business and vulnerable to misuse.

But what is certain: it is inevitable that it is not Islamic Extremists who use charities and non-profit organisations to advance agendas - they are all capable of it - from the IRA, to the BNP, to counter-terrorism and beyond. It's not always criminal, it's just unethical, the upshot of uninhibited cronyism as opposed to fraud.

links:
Labour ignites new cronyism row as Lord Currie is named Ofcom Chairman
New cronyism row over Blair's 16 Labour peers
Labour donor link to money-launder scandal
Police examine Lib Dems donation
Politicians rely on county parties to funnel contributions, avoid campaign limits



more reading:
Who's Who Guide to Kevin Halligen and the McCann Lobby