The Bureau no longer does old ground. And never did do wishful thinking.

The London Crown Prosecution Service 

The London CPS covers the Metropolitan police (Scotland Yard) area. Quote:  "As the principal prosecuting authority in England and Wales the CPS is responsible for criminal cases beyond the police investigatory stage. The CPS will advise the police on cases for possible prosecution, review cases submitted by the police, determine any charges in all but minor cases, prepare cases for court and present cases at court. Primarily, the CPS will review the evidence gathered by the police and provide guidance. [Bureau italics] During pre-charge procedures and throughout the investigative and prosecuting process the CPS may assist the police by explaining what additional work or evidence could raise the case to a viable charging standard thereby rectifying any evidential deficiencies. Once the evidence is gathered the CPS will then decide, on the basis of this evidence, whether a case should be pursued or dropped."

Evening Standard

"London’s chief crown prosecutor Alison Saunders and her deputy Jenny Hopkins flew to Portugal in April to meet counterparts to discuss leads identified in the Met’s review." Evening Standard, June 21 2013.

The Evening Standard is even more broke than its stable mate the Independent, is owned by one of the Russian oligarchs – the plunderers who Putin perhaps should have executed – and has almost no full-time journalists. So it's about as original and reliable as the Portugal News.

But it does have an agreement with the Mail owners to use their stories (this one is understood to be left over  from the Mail's  "UK takeover"  piece last week) and  the two prosecutors  are named and have not denied the news item. Jenny Hopkins is not just a deputy: she is Head of  the Complex Casework Unit.  

No sauces needed 

So consider two  points. First, it is another opportunity for a Home Office or Yard refutation of last week's stories and yet, once again, no rebuttal, or even guiding hint suggesting  caution,  has appeared.  Inference: the "takeover" story is again strengthened and, as things stand, very likely to be true in broad outline.  

Secondly, what can the CPS Metropolitan police area heads  have been doing there?

Well, they are prosecutors, so even in this crooked old world it's fair to infer that they went to discuss possible prosecution in accordance with their role quoted above.

Of whom?  

The answer can only be either  people who were neither arguidos nor persons of interest in the original Portuguese investigation or  those who were. The former, in theory, could be, literally, anybody: ink-blots from the troubled but vivid imagination of Gerry McCann such as paid toddler-thieves and international paedophile rings; others who have hitherto escaped any  study at all and may be living anywhere from New Zealand to Brazil; still others who might have been highlighted by the Yard team in their "opportunity" investigations and, lastly and most fatuously, the unfortunates like Hewitt whose names were bandied about by the paid liar Clarence Mitchell, the sheep-strangler Edgar (seen above demonstrating the tools of his trade)  and their paymasters.

The one thing we know for absolutely certain about this disparate group is that the same Portuguese  Attorney-General's department which highlighted the absence of any evidence of wrong-doing by the McCanns and archived the case has repeatedly stated that "no new evidence" of significance has been provided to it during the period of the Scotland Yard review.

Your Question Answered

Unless the Attorney-General's department is publicly lying on the record, which we consider absolutely out of the question, then no material has been provided to that department to justify  even investigation of any new names, let alone possible prosecution.

So the answer to the question who could have been the subject of  Anglo-Portuguese discussions regarding prosecution is self-evident and incontrovertible:  persons  against whom the evidence for prosecution has already been gathered  (remember "no new evidence")  in the original Amaral/Rebelo investigation.

Our crime and lunacy correspondent adds: the whitewash is nearly complete. The two women, one of whom is known to live in a part of London where a Freemasons' temple stood only two hundred years ago, have probably been selected by the prime minister himself. In any case their mission is to put the final details into place in Operation Patsydeath.