Second NZ link to Madeleine McCann

A second New Zealand link has been revealed in the mystery disappearance of British four-year-old Madeleine McCann.

A security guard at The Warehouse in Dunedin called police after speaking with a small girl with a British accent who looked remarkably similar to Madeleine just seven months after she disappeared while on holiday with her parents in Portugal.

New Zealand Interpol passed CCTV footage of the girl on to Portuguese police, but the sighting was apparently ignored by them, it was revealed yesterday.

Madeleine's parents Gerry and Kate, who live in Britain, are reportedly furious the information was not passed on. Madeleine vanished from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007 while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.

The sighting follows reports last August that investigators were looking for a woman with a New Zealand or Australian accent as part of the worldwide search for the girl.

A British businessman said he spoke to the "Victoria Beckham lookalike" with an antipodean accent in Barcelona just 72 hours after Madeleine vanished. The woman appeared to confuse him for someone else and is reported to have asked him: "Are you here to deliver my new daughter? Have you got her? Have you got the child?".

This week, Portuguese courts released a 2000-page dossier that contained information from police forces in the United States, Europe and North Africa that Portuguese investigators apparently discarded, British newspapers report.

The dossier reveals the Dunedin security guard noticed the girl looked like Madeleine and was suspicious of the behaviour of a portly man holding the little girl's hand.

The guard spoke to the girl, who had a British accent, but said her name was "Hailey", the documents show. Convinced she was Madeleine, the guard called the police.

Acting Southern District Commander Inspector David Campbell said police obtained CCTV footage from the store of the child and the family with her and investigated, but were unable to find the girl or the family she was with. The file was forwarded to Interpol.

"The lead jurisdiction, in this case Portugal, directs how the case progresses and has not asked NZ Police for any follow-up to date."

He said the file had remained open. Dunedin police last night said another person had phoned in to report a possible sighting of Madeleine after reports of The Warehouse sighting became public.

According to a note on the file sent to Portuguese police, authorities there ruled the CCTV photos were "not relevant" to the case.

Madeleine's parents say it is heartbreaking their private investigators were not given access to the leads. "We're gutted," Mrs McCann told Britain's Daily Mail. "It's absolutely shocking and difficult. Some of the information handed in was very credible.

A spokesman for the McCanns said: "They were shocked when they saw the scale of the information that came in and the lack of action taken. There are potential leads in the file that are now being followed up by our investigators."

- © Fairfax NZ News