Sergey Malinka and the Alias Nation

Sergey Malinka and the Mournful Legion: A quick delve into the peculiar mechanics of Robert Murat and Michaela Walczuch 's Romigen website and the Moldovian-Russian-Romanian émigré, Sergey Malinka's 'Nik Legaloff' nom de plume.

It's been noted on a few websites that the property www.romigen.com website designed for Murat by Malinka was full of spelling and grammatical errors and semed unlikely to have been compiled for use by the public. It is also alleged that it had zero properties to sell. Not much of a surprise in today's economy, but back in May 2007, something of a riddle, perhaps.

As someone has said already, it seems unusual that Robert Murat left a job that granted him 6000€/month and dedicate himself entirely to a business he was promoting so carelessly and so half-heartedly.

According to the Internet Archive, 'Way Back Machine' the site failed to register any content prior to May 18th 2007 even though it was registered some 12 months before this date.

Now none of this may mean anything, of course. A man is seized by inspiration, throws in his job and spents the next 12 months putting his ideas together. Compiling the content for a website and can be timely and expensive process, and in my experience at least, is often left until the last minute - which is perhaps why he got Sergey Malinka involved.

However, looking at the html code from a page stored in the archive it says the site was developed not by Sergey Malinka but by someone trading under the dubious name of: niklegaloff.com a.k.a Nik Legaloff

Why Nik Legaloff? Who knows. Nick's Legal Office? Good idea, but it's not right. An anagram of A Flocking Elf? Angel Lick Off? Ace Fling Folk? No. It was getting hopeless. Then I took another look online. And there, looking out at me from Last FM was the man the with all the hair products, Nik Legaloff, a faintly CGI looking gentleman with a prickly kind of penchant for styling mousse and a broad and eclectic weakness for all kinds of heavy metal: doom metal, folk-metal, symphonic metal plus an occasional dose of progressive rock. Nothing wrong in that, I suppose. Nothing that a trip to the clinic wouldn't cure, anyway. But just look at his favourite songs: Theatre of Tragedy, Radioactive Toy, Fear of a Blank Planet, Perfection or Vanity, Angel Gets Caught in the Beauty Trap, Cowboys from Hell ... the list goes on. And whilst you should never judge a book by its cover, I think we can proceed with some degree of confidence in saying that Mr. Legaloff is not an altogether straightforward gentleman.

Of course, it turns out that Nik Legalhoff is none other than Sergey Malinka. Not an anagram of Namesake Girly, Sangria Meekly or Greasy Manlike but the Russian computer expert responsible for designing Murat and Walczuch's Romigen website - and also the man who is alleged to have called Murat at 11.30pm on the night of May 3rd. Only he's not really from Russia, well not exactly anyway. He's from Moldova by all accounts. And he has not just one alias but several: Fedorenko Nikolai, Petrov Ivan Nikolaevich - they're all Malinka. How do we know? Well it's really quite simple. Petrov Ivan Nikolaevich (the real name of Russian Architect, Ivan Petrovich Ropet) has been dead for the best part of 100 years and Fedorenko quaffed his his last bottle of Smirnoff back in 2000.

So let's have a look at his websites in a little more detail.

The niklegaloff.com domain is registered to Nik at elus-com.net in Tiraspol - a Jewish stronghold in Moldova (former Soviet Union and former Romania). Over 100,000 Jews perished here during the second world war as a result of the Romanian led invasion of the region. The region is still plagued by anti-semitism.

The site is registered to Nik at Elus-Com.net, and the address is quite interesting too. Although I cannot find an exact match, I did find out that a few doors up from 22 Komunisticheskaya Street was the Independent Information Centre 'Tiras-Media' c/o Petrov Evgenij Andreevich, Komunisticheskaya 27-93, Tiraspol, Moldova. Tiras Media - is a Moldovian politcal news agency and human rights monitoring group. The group was included in a list put togther by General Assembly of the United Nations and recommended as part of its 'World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance' forum.

However, when I look to see who the domain www.elus-com.net is registered to, I notice that the IP resolves to Berlin, Germany and that the address is registered to another Moldavian address, this time to Kamenka.

By a staggering coincidence there is also a 'Kamenka' in Belarus, Russia. In Summer last year the McCanns sent all those toys donated by wellwishers in Rothely to orphanages in Belarus and Zhodino.

The Kamenka domain is registered to someone by the name of Petrov Ivan Nikolaevich, Tel. +373.77712543.

Ivan Nikolaevich Petrov, however, was a famous Russian Architect, known for the revival of Romantic Nationalism (he used the pseudonym Ivan Petrovich Ropet). Kamenka was also the childhood playground of Lolita-author Vladimir Nabokov. And whilst the address Suvorova Str 35 Kamenka doesn't yield an exact match but there is a Social Orphanage for Infants and Teenagers at Suvorova.

It is another region that is rife with anti-semitism.

The other alias he uses, Nikolai Fedorenko, may be a reference to the Soviet philologist, orientalist, statesman and Soviet representative at the United Nations Security Council (he is famous for having compared the Isaraeli Jewish Zionists to 'Hitler's Executioners'). He was subsequently accused of anti-semitism by pro-Israel supporters.

Looking into the background of Malinka's aliases may not be completely meaningless as both Nikolai Fedorenko and Ivan Nikolaevich Petrov may be broadly construed as Nationalist figures and variously anti-semitic. Heroes to Malinka, or villains?

What else do we know about Malinka? Well we know he was involved in another commercial venture with a man called Matthew Fazackerley. The two had collaborated on an Internet and IT project called (rather imaginatively) 'Inter Net' in 2006 with the intention being to 'put profit back into the local community and into education'. In fact it was probably his relationship with Fazackerley that put him into contact with Property Developer, Robert Murat, Fazackerley and Malinka having worked on the 'ivideohomes.com' website' a property dealership owned by Jeff Mason of Monaco (and, let's face it, almost as conspicuous a business name as 'IWatchLadiesUndressingFromMyWindowWithMyBinoculars.com').

Some have even speculated on a link between 'IVideoHomes' and Robert's former employers, 'Portuguese Homes' (through agents Elizabeth Ferreira and Jaime Hilario). Then we have Malinkas's work on the infamous ''Island Expeditions' website and his work for 'Corlett Actividades Maritimas Limitada' - the former dealing in boats trips in and around the Mediterranean to the West Coast of Africa and the latter specialising in expeditions to São Tomé and Principé (www.corlettmaritima.com). We also know that he's interested in photography, web design and server-side technologies. Oh, and we also know he likes hair products.

Inevitably almost all of these sites, including www.niklegaloff.com, have been pulled. Many of them in January and February of this year - Malinka's name having long since been stripped from them.

They can, however, be viewed (although not always in their entirety, sadly) at this website: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

A bogeyman, a scapegoat, a crazy Nationalist, just someone caught up in a nightmare? Or (given the undeniably English irony of the names 'Legaloff' and 'Nik Elus') a brave and consumate actor?

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Robert Murat starting up a website? Maddie hunter Amanda Hart starting up a website? Paulo Reis starting up a website? And all just before Madeleine went missing. How peculiar.