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LONDON - Billionaire tycoon Sir Richard Branson is reportedly giving £100,000 ($282,000) to create a fighting fund to help the parents of Madeleine McCann clear their names.
The Sunday Times reported that the fund, which will cover legal and PR expenses, is to seek the support of wealthy businessmen convinced of the McCanns' innocence.
Branson, who has been in regular contact with the couple since their daughter went missing, hopes that it could amass £1 million, the paper said.
The money would mean that members of the McCann family could drop their plans to sell their houses to pay legal costs.
A source close to Branson said: "Sir Richard wants to ensure the McCanns get access to the best legal advice. He has a good instinct on these things. It will help to ensure that they get a fair hearing and that all of the facts become available."
Friends of the McCanns have leapt to their defence as the besieged couple launched a new publicity campaign in Europe to help the search for their missing daughter Madeleine.
The renewed offensive was aimed at shifting the focus back on to the search for the toddler and away from speculation about her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann.
Friends of Madeleine's 39-year-old mother have insisted that she was an exemplary parent who would never harm her children.
The McCanns have been named formal suspects in Madeleine's disappearance. This means they can no longer speak about the police investigation.
Madeleine McCann was 3 when she vanished from her bedroom in an apartment in the southern Portuguese coastal resort of Praia da Luz.
Gerry McCann, a hospital cardiologist, and Kate McCann, a family doctor, were with friends at a restaurant about 150m away.
Kate McCann's friend, Linda McQueen, said it was unthinkable that either parent would have harmed their eldest child.
"Not at all, not a shadow of a doubt from anybody at all ever," she said.
"They are the most loving, caring, family-oriented couple you could ever meet. They are absolutely fabulous. Those three children are the world to them."
Madeleine was "everything they ever wanted", McQueen said.
"They had been up and down about whether they could get pregnant and the in vitro fertilisation and it was a dream come true. Kate always wanted a large family so it means the world to her. She is just a fabulous mum."
Asked if Kate McCann was struggling as a mother of three, she replied: "I have never ever seen Kate run ragged in her life. If anybody was meant to have three children under 3 it's Kate. She is just cool, calm, laid-back."
McQueen recounted Kate McCann's reaction after Madeleine vanished.
"I spoke to Kate that morning. We were texting back and forward. Kate was saying 'somebody's taken Madeleine'. She was just shocked and traumatised. She was frantic, trying to get everything going."
Asked if the McCanns could cope if Madeleine was found dead, she replied: "We are not even ready to go down that road."
Nicky Gill, another friend, said on the media treatment of Kate McCann: "I want people to know how Kate is and what she is like. To have these words said about her is just so unfair and hurtful. They just do not deserve it whatsoever."
The McCanns' £80,000 publicity campaign will consist of newspaper, television and billboard adverts primarily in Portugal and Spain. The blitz will be financed by Madeleine's Fund, the non-profit organisation administering donations to aid the search.
"The fund will finance a broad range of initiatives in advertising to remind everyone that Madeleine is still missing," Gerry McCann's brother John told a press conference in Rothley, central England, yesterday.
"This financing of advertisements will complement previous efforts by the fund and many motivated individuals - family, friends and people touched by our cause.
"I hope the general public will continue to support us in this. It is so important that we remember 'don't you forget about me' - our lovely wee Madeleine."
The family said last week it would not use the fund to pay for the McCanns' legal costs.
Meanwhile, Portuguese police have admitted that confusion and disagreements in the early stages of the investigation meant they could find it very difficult to prove their suspicion that the McCanns were involved in their daughter's disappearance.
The startling admission, before a crucial ruling this week by a Portuguese judge on how the case should proceed, came from sources close to the investigation.
The sources said potentially crucial evidence about what happened to Madeleine on the night of May 3 had been lost by the time the first local police arrived, because of the presence of "the McCanns, their friends and others" in the holiday flat from which she disappeared.
In the days that followed, there was growing tension between the Algarve force which took the lead in the investigation and senior officers from Lisbon, who were sceptical about the decision to focus on a local British resident, Robert Murat, as a suspect after a tip-off from a British journalist.
"British police and crime experts also suggested that Murat fitted the profile to have been behind a kidnapping," a police source said.
"But the Lisbon investigators were from the start unsettled about the lack of any motive. Months later, there is nothing to suggest he was involved."
He said precious time and resources had been lost before DNA results prompted this month's sudden shift of focus on to the McCanns.
-Observer, AFP
