Latest from CMoMM member Natasha Donn

Latest from CMoMM member and journalist extraordinaire - Natasha Donn...

New book threatens to expose “lies, bribery, blackmail and defamation” in case of world’s most famous missing person

It’s called “Madeleine McCann” Collateral Damage and it promises “new facts” in the decade-long mystery over the three-year-old who went missing from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

But far from setting out to solve the puzzle, the project is designed to set the record straight, says its author - redress some of the consequences of the media circus that has blighted lives since that fateful day in May, 2007.


Written by Sergey Malinka, the book is essentially his way of trying to move on. The 33-year-old computer technician has just become a father. He wants his two-month-old son Linar to be able to live a normal life, he told the Resident. He doesn’t want his child to type his father’s name into a search engine in a few years time and simply see hundreds of references to Malinka’s so-called involvement in the disappearance of the world’s most famous missing person.

Although drawn into the mystery from the start - even being re-interviewed as an arguido (‘formal suspect’) six years later - Malinka has been formally dropped from police inquiries.

He has in the past also successfully sued for defamation in the press.

But the shadow of this seemingly endless mystery has blighted his life for far too long.

The arrival of Linar, along with belief that “still there are no conclusive leads” has led him to take the initiative and write his story.

In Malinka’s online pitch on KickStarter - a kind of crowd-funding platform for creative projects - he explains that he has chosen this way of getting the book out as “we know, from the past 10 years, that whatever you write could be banned from the public access”
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He believes KickStarter will ensure “the book will be released and people will get it in the original state”.
It has “a lot of sensitive information”, he added, along with “the most revealing details about my story” … “all the difficulties, the bribery, the threatening, the blackmailing, the defamation and just general aggravation from public that I have passed through”.

Indeed, the Russian who now has Portuguese nationality says he hopes the story - edited by local resident and author David S. Jones - will help anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation in the future and “doesn’t know what to do”.


In Malinka’s case, the past led him to the depths of despair, he explains.


“For 10 years I've kept quiet hoping to see some closure, but now I see that without my input this would never stop”.
By ‘this’ he refers to the slurs against his name that remain ‘out there’ in the ether, unchallenged.
“Madeleine McCann” Collateral Damage means to change all that, and anyone interested in supporting this initiative can read more about it via:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dmitrylaier/madeleine-mccann-collat...
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com

Hmm. I'm pretty sure only people who are very familiar with the case will know who Sergey Malinka is, so his claim to do this in the hope that attention will move away from his son seem a bit facetious. If anything this will draw attention to him and garner a new round of media interest. Still, it will be interesting to see who he was blackmailed by.

Hasn’t exactly flown from the starting gate.
 
£604 pledged of £26,831 goal
 
17 backers
 
23 days to go
 
All or nothing. This project will only be funded if it reaches its goal by Tue, December 19 2017 11:30 PM UTC +00:00.
 
 
   
Looks to be a non-starter to me!

Why has he got to raise £26,831?

Why such a precise figure?

Why has he got to have backers to write a book that he's going to sell for money anyway? 

Will he pay back his backers out of the sale of his book?

I don't understand why he needs to raise money to write a book?

And if it's to pay his ghostwriter, then why would a ghostwriter want £26,831? That figure seems exceptionally high to me.

nglfi wrote:Hmm. I'm pretty sure only people who are very familiar with the case will know who Sergey Malinka is, so his claim to do this in the hope that attention will move away from his son seem a bit  facetious.  If anything this will draw attention to him and garner a new round of media interest. Still, it will be interesting to see who he was blackmailed by.

Exactly what I was thinking.

And £10 for a pdf book? No thanks. That's just money grabbing greed.

Verity:
 
Why has he got to raise £26,831?

Why such a precise figure?
 
   
Equates to €30,000, but still seems hugely excessive for something he appears to have pretty much written already.

Thank you Doug. Doh, I didn't think about €'s 

As you say, hugely excessive.

I can't say I've ever seen an author having to raise money before a book is published. Don't the publishers take the risk on the book if they think it's going to be a good seller? 

It certainly wouldn't cost that much to self publish otherwise hardly anyone would self publish.

nglfi wrote:Hmm. I'm pretty sure only people who are very familiar with the case will know who Sergey Malinka is, so his claim to do this in the hope that attention will move away from his son seem a bit  facetious.  If anything this will draw attention to him and garner a new round of media interest. Still, it will be interesting to see who he was blackmailed by.

Precisely - how will publishing a book bring closure for him or help his family?

Do you reckon they could do a discount bundle pack? His bewk and The Untold Story documentary video?
Looking at the funding generated so far I envisage a similar outcome. 
And he might need another new car. Again.

Like all www.theworks.co.uk teasers and failed promises, it's destined for the bargain basement before it ever hits the John Bull 4-9 year olds printing set.

Alphabestism at it's finest - it should go down in history along with the Goose and Winters swan song

Verdi wrote:Like all www.theworks.co.uk teasers and failed promises, it's destined for the bargain basement before it ever hits the John Bull 4-9 year olds printing set.

Alphabestism at it's finest - it should go down in history along with the Goose and Winters swan song

I had one of those John Bull Printing Outfits. All tiny rubber letters, tweezers and an ink pad that dried up day one. Yet, even with one of those, where one letter would always be on thicker rubber and made anything you "stamped" indecipherable, I could probably knock out a similar pot boiler of equal worth.
Then again, we might hear something we didn't already know. 
Could happen. Yes? 
No.
Best of three anyone? 

Aha - I've always wondered how Ms Healy managed to find a publisher for her autobiographical novel. Now I know, it was John Bull with a little help from a mysterious well wisher.

The list of would be it I could be authors is ever growing, starting with Ms Healy's Dear Diary and ending currently with Sergey Malinka's Collatoral Damage, with many casualties on the way.

Maybe they should reference PeterMac's e-book - packed with genuine research, analysis, informed opinion and all free gratis and for nothing..

http://whatreallyhappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.co.uk/