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South Tyneside Council has abandoned it’s hunt for notorious blogger Mr Monkey after spending more than £200,000 of taxpayers’ cash.

The anonymous simian scribe made defamatory comments about councillors online between 2008 and 2009, prompting authority chiefs to launch an international witchhunt.

But after five years of fruitless searching - including having an American court force Twitter to hand over private account details of some of its users - the council has given up having spent a “ludicrous” amount of money.

A spokesman for the Taxpayers Alliance, Andy Silvester, said: ‘Pursuing this claim at the expense of hard-pressed taxpayers was ludicrous and the investigation has wasted thousands of pounds.

“Good sense has finally prevailed, but taxpayers have had to foot a massive bill in the meantime.”

The Mr Monkey blog first appeared in 2008 and targeter council leader Iain Malcolm, Labour colleague councillor Anne Walsh, the late Tory and UKIP councillor David Potts and council regeneration boss Rick O’Farrell.

At the height of its popularity the site - which referred to councillors as Pudgy Face, Miss Piggy, the King of Sleaze and The Fat Mackem Hobbit - was getting over 4,000 hits a day, as he made allegations of vote rigging, that expenses were being claimed for “piss ups”, and documented alleged drunken misadventures and dodgy affairs.

In 2009 the blogger became aware of workers at the council trying to silence him, to which he responded: “It seems senior councillors and a handful of council officers have become so obsessed with Mr Monkey’s Blog that they’ll stop at nothing to close it down.”

The blogger alleged that council officers tried to censor the blog by barring access to it from council owned computers.

“Imagine what the public would say about a council who spends hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money chasing a monkey,” Mr Monkey added.

Then, for reasons unknown, in July 2009 Mr Monkey said that after causing “mayhem in the corridors of power” he would no longer be posting any new material.

Yet the council continued with its search, claiming it had a “duty of care” to its staff to unmask the writer.

In 2011 lawyers gave the authority an 18-page dossier in which said Mr Monkey was most likely a two-man operation and that libel action would be ‘highly successful’ if pursued through the UK or US courts.

However no charges were ever brought and last month the hunt was apparently called off, with the council having spent £214,000.

A spokesman for the authority defended the decision to go after the blogger for so long.

“The council took legal action because it has a duty of care to protect its staff and officials from the kind of harassment and intimidation caused by this malicious and libellous blog, which, if left unchallenged, would have seriously damaged the reputations of innocent people.

“Since the council initiated the action in 2009, the libellous comments have stopped and there have been no new postings on the blog.

“Taking legal action attracted some criticism, but as a council we felt it was our duty to mount this challenge in order to protect people from cyber-bullying and harassment.

“We stand by this principle.”

But the Mr Monkey saga is still not over, with the council set to pursue former independent councillor Ahmed Khan for costs awarded against him following his unsuccessful challenge in the US courts to halt the Town Hall hunt for the notorious blogger.

San Mateo County Court in California dismissed his anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation) motion in 2011, describing it as “frivolous”.

And a subsequent appeal was rejected, with a court costs order of $97,475.96 – the equivalent of £56,803.84 - made against Mr Khan.

The authority said it is “progressing the process” to recover the costs and if the amount remains unpaid, recovery proceedings will be issued in the English courts.