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<\/p>\nPolice have been given a \u00a3350,000 (NZ$689,000) cash boost in a bid to nail the prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann disappearance case.<\/p>\n
The controversial inquiry, named Operation Grange, has cost the UK taxpayers more than $24.6m since it was launched in 2011.<\/p>\n
The Home Office has now approved the Metropolitan Police’s request for more funds.<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Sun, Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said they won’t stop the search for Maddie until there is “nothing left to do”.<\/p>\n
“In line with our Special Grant processes, funding for Operation Grange is approved on an annual basis.<\/p>\n
“Ministers have approved a request for \u00a3349,328 of funding for this financial year.”<\/p>\n
The move comes as German police say they are close to having enough evidence to charge paedophile Christian Brueckner with Maddie’s disappearance and murder.<\/p>\n
German and UK authorities are working together to gather vital evidence.<\/p>\n
Recently, police uncovered a secret compound linked to Brueckner.<\/p>\n
Located in the southern Algarve region of Portugal \u2013 the same area where 3-year-old Maddie’s vanished from a holiday apartment back in 2007 \u2013 the property belongs to convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner’s ex-girlfriend Nicole Fehlinger.<\/p>\n
News of the compound emerged after Fehlinger’s father Dieter was recently interviewed for a second time by German authorities, who are reportedly taking the revelation “very seriously”.<\/p>\n
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Dieter claims that his daughter and her former lover Breuckner, 44, were the only people who had access to the compound.<\/p>\n
“No one knows that my daughter not only had the private residence in Portugal at her disposal, but also a separate compound,” he told The Mirror.<\/p>\n
“No one has ever searched there or the property has never turned up in connection with Maddie.”<\/p>\n
At the time of McCann’s disappearance, Fehlinger and Brueckner had been living together in a private residence very close to the secret compound.<\/p>\n
Hidden by overgrown trees and weeds, the 5000sq m compound was guarded by four fierce Kangal dogs, which have the strongest bite of any canine in the world.<\/p>\n
“The area is completely overgrown, not visible. No one could get in or out, only my daughter and perhaps [Brueckner] with her,” Dieter said.<\/p>\n
The former couple had regular phone conversations and even went for a weekend getaway in Lisbon together just months after Madeleine vanished, Portuguese court documents show.<\/p>\n
Fehlinger, a mother of three, is not suspected of having any involvement in the disappearance of Madeleine.<\/p>\n
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Brueckner maintains he had nothing to do with Maddie’s disappearance but refuses to co-operate with police.<\/p>\n
The new cash boost comes as Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann have raised more than $1.4m if the money ever dries up.<\/p>\n
It comes after the couple said “we’re never going to give up” as they paid tribute to their daughter on her 18th birthday on May 12.<\/p>\n