Parents of the missing girl, Madeleine McCann have now been named as “arguidos” or formal suspects in the case, their spokesman Justine McGuinness has told the press that the Portuguese police believe Madeleine was killed by accident.

All of this though raises some questions about the Madeleine Fund, which now tops 1 million GBP, donated by people to help find the missing girl. Not only are the funds being spent on Justine McGuinness’s services and the PR team in Portugal, they are also investigating the possibility of using them for their defence. (Telegraph)

Mrs McCann was joined by top Lisbon lawyer Carlos Pinto de Abreu who arrived in Praia da Luz yesterday morning.

The couple is looking into whether the fighting fund to help find Madeleine will be able to pay for his legal advice.

They have been offered support from the British consulate in Portimao but a consul can only sit in with British nationals in police interviews if they have been arrested.

I don’t imagine this use of the fund will sit well with the British public. Especially as they have now returned to the UK to continue the fight to clear their name from here. They have also launched a seperate libel case against a Portuguese newspaper, although these costs will apparently not be taken from the fund.

Separately, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, the McCanns lawyer, has been instructed by Kate and Gerry McCann to bring charges against a Portuguese weekly newspaper for defamation.
The case will be taken against Emidio Fernando, Tal & Qual’s Director, and Catarina Vaz, Tal & Qual’s journalist. Papers have been sent to the Court in Oporto.

The legal expenses for the proceedings will not be paid from Madeleine’s fund, Mr McCann explained recently.

We get some more details about the fund from their mySpace page:

A series of concerts and other fund-raising events helped money flow in. So far £70,000 has been spent on staff, housing, transport and communications.

Kate and Gerry McCann’s campaign manager Justine McGuinness is also paid out of the funds.

According to the fund’s website, it is a non-charitable company set up to help find Madeleine and support her family. It says any surplus “will be used to help families and missing children in the UK, Portugal and elsewhere.”

The fund has not been set up as a charity because it would have to show public benefit.

Because it is currently focused on searching for only one child it cannot register as a charity.

But sources close to the McCanns said there are plans to give the fund charitable status in the future. It is managed by a team of financial experts and McCann family members.

They include Brian Kennedy, Madeleine’s great uncle, and John McCann, Gerry’s brother.

However as this is a private fund there is no obligation to use the surplus for any other purpose. The conditions of the fund are quite vague it seems, with one of the clauses being “To provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine’s family”. So it seems quite likely that this support could extend to legal fees.

It also raises some questions about how funds like this should be organised and managed. If they are going to use it for legal fees it is very unlikely that this fund can be turned into a charity. As the quote above suggests, a charity has to show it is performing some public good. That would be hard to demonstrate when it would be used to defend a case brought by the public procecutor (regardless of the country) or even an extradition.

Preferably the money should have gone to a more independant body, such as the NSPCC. Maybe it’s not too late for the McCanns to think about moving it now, if they don’t want a public backlash over the issue.

The British press seem remarkably biased over this case, especially when the recent forensic evidence was found through a cooporation between Portuguese and British investigators. This issue of the funds may well catch them off guard. You can already see some references to this on the internet (1|2) where the reactions to the case are a less xenophobic.

The part I never understand though, is why Russians don’t wear seatbelts. It’s almost unheard of here and drivers actually look hurt if you make a move to buckle up. As Anna has explained to me, it’s seen as an insult to their driving skills.

Well tough, I’m responsible for my own life so I always put one on. You can’t argue with the facts, 63% of people who die in car accidents aren’t wearing one. It’s not 100% protection but it sure as hell reduces the risk. I also make a point of everyone doing it in our car, much to their amusement. So I found this video on Youtube and showed it to everyone in the office. They were pretty shocked. Especially two of the girls here who regularly carry their babies on their laps in the front seat.

It’s been very interesting for me to watch the developments surrounding the death of Mark Blanco in this light.

If the Russian system is so bad, surely the UK system would manage to run an investigation that would uncover the truth about this case?

But no. There has been a complete failure by the police to investigate the incident or even question the witnesses. They seem to have dismissed any evidence that would point to suspicious circumstances. To all appearances they had closed this case before it had even started. It took an effort for them even to bother questioning Doherty at all, and then they did it days later over a telephone chat.

Even the material in the ‘free’ media has been greatly misleading. It’s seemed more like a carefully managed PR exercise in spin than a real investigation of the facts. The coverage soon ended after speculation suggested that the CCTV evidence would clear Doherty of any wrong doing. As with the best game of chinese whispers, this speculation soon became fact and everyone had a nice tidy ending to the story.

It all leaves you with a bad taste in the mouth and the knowledge that although Russia has it’s problems so definitely does the West.

As Richard Ingram writes in the Independent, the Mark Blanco case is similar to that of Stuart Lubbock, who’s body was found in Michael Barrymore’s swimming pool in 2001. Despite evidence suggestive of sexual assault, no one has ever been charged.

If the Barrymore case is anything to go by, they may have to wait some time before the authorities get round to discovering what happened.

So the next time you hear the news broadcasters or editorials explain that Russian cases are left unsolved due to their corrupt or ineffective system - remember Mark. Justice doesn’t always happen over there either.

He had gone round to visit the flat of Peter Roundhill. The Sun Newspaper reports that Roundhill is "Doherty's best friend and soulmate, a modern-day Fagin who is known to locals as a small-time drug dealer and user". Again, according to the Sun report, the flat has a reputation as a crack-den.

[Paul Roundhill's] flat, on the second floor of a mansion block, is an absolute tip. The internal walls have been torn down, the toilet is a disgusting shade of brown and the bath has not been used for washing for years. If the cooker has ever been used it has only been to boil up drugs.

Mark had gone there that night to try and persuade Pete Doherty to attend his upcoming play, "Accidental Death of an Anarchist", presumably to get more publicity for the production.

There were six other people in the flat - Roundhill, Doherty, Pete's minder Johnny Headlock, Roundhill's posh friend of similar age Annabel Heald, a girl called Kate - not Moss - plus another woman.

It doesn't seem to have gone very well. This is London newspaper report suggests the party-goers took an instant dislike to Mark:

According to friends, Doherty, his minder, known as Johnny Headlock, and Mr Roundhill started bullying Mr Blanco.

One friend said: "They wouldn't let him sit down and gave the only spare seat to the dog. Then they burnt his cap. Someone at the party, who was supposed to be a mate, punched him three times in the face before he was thrown out of the party".

I can believe this part of the story. Both Pete Doherty and Paul Roundhill come from middle class backgrounds, as did Mark. Mark had been to Cambridge university, was intellectual and talked 'posh'. When you are trying to fit into the drug culture, you try to hide these traits. Meeting someone like this becomes acutely embarrassing as they show you up for the fraud you are.

Peter Roundhill says that he kicked Mark out of the party and never left the flat but other reports say that Mark left the party with Roundhill, Pete Doherty, and Jonny Headlock. The Sun reports that a neighbour,

heard a massive struggle. Paul Roundhill was shouting and there was lots of swearing. There was a scream and the guy landed on the floor. Two girls went down to the street to try to revive him.

Mark was on life support for two days and then died, his £800 Tag Heuer watch and gold cufflinks are still reported missing.

There are a lot of parts in this story that don't add up from my point of view. Mark not a violent person in any sense, and would use his intellect to try and win. He would never start a fight and reports of him 'physically intimidating' Peter Doherty make no sense to me. Pete Doherty has been in and out of jail several times for drug and burglary convictions, it's hard to imagine a slim-build Cambridge intellectual worried him to that degree.

Mark was also not a person to be 'star-struck' - which made the following comment by Paul Roundhill seem so odd.

Roundhill said: "He was over-excited. He would not calm down. He had spoken to Pete and invited him to the play and he was excited that he had talked to someone so famous as Pete about that."

Maybe he was projecting his own feelings about Pete Doherty onto Mark there? Graduating from Cambridge or Oxford University, often means you mix with many famous and influential people along the way. You soon learn to take all this in your stride. Mark was clever enough to understand celebrity, and knew that by bringing Doherty to his new play he could increase the media interest. He wasn't turning up at that flat as a star-struck fan.

Paul Roundhill then goes on to suggest that Mark committed suicide, "I think he did not fall accidentally. In some ways it seems he was doing a creative act or making a creative statement in his mind, having been ejected, by jumping."

I have trouble believing that, as do many of his friends. People with severe vertigo don't tend to climb over balconies or commit suicide by jumping. Besides, Pete Doherty refusing to attend your play is hardly a reason to end it all.

A lot of this story doesn't add up. I sincerely hope that the police get to the bottom of this. They don't seem to be treating this very seriously at the moment, with one 'phone call interview' to Pete Doherty so far.

To cap everything off Pete Doherty seems to have stepped over Mark as he was dying and moved on to another party with Paul Roundhill, Jonny Headlock and other party-goers. He wrecked a hotel room that night and ran off (again) when the police were called.

Doherty also disrupted a wedding party, set off the fire alarm and started a fist fight in the bar before fleeing when police were called.

A hotel spokesman said: "He’s ripped out every wall light fitting, torn down the curtains, smashed every mirror, broken all the lamps, upturned all the furniture and wrecked the telephone and Internet connection sockets."

I'd like to join Mark's family in calling for a full police investigation to uncover the truth behind the death.

R.I.P. Mark

News Articles

Sick and inhumane Pete Doherty left my son to die
Flat owner is Pete's svengali
The damaged world of Doherty's circle
Party victim ‘did not jump’
Did he fall - or was he pushed? Questions surround Doherty and the party death
Party fall actor had clash with Doherty
Doherty Branded ‘Sick’ by Blanco’s Family
Doherty hides away in amid rumours of split Highlands with Kate
Doherty bouncer tells of last moments before actor’s death
Pete Doherty, The Big K, and what really happened at the Hotel in the Sky

Other Blogs

Accidental death of Mark Blanco - Andy Mayer

When a mutual friend got knocked down by a car, he was the guy who went to see her every night until she got better. He was a heck of showman and he deserves better than being a remembered as a walk-on part somebody else's pop career.

Mark's MySpace Page - Set up by Mark's family and friends

“I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq, where there is a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country, you know, would hope that Russia would do the same thing,” Bush said.

“We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly” Putin deadpanned, to laughter from Russian-speaking listeners.

And people say Putin doesn’t have a sense of humour…

Source: Reuters

Tags: USA,, George Bush,, Russia,, G8,, Putin,, Vladmir Putin

When it comes to environmentalism, you don’t normally think of Russia of somewhere particularly ‘green’. Partly that’s true, you’re more likely to see a plane here than a car running on a Hybrid engine. One area they excel at though is recycling bottles and cans. At most street corners you can catch a babooshka (old lady) collecting these in sacks.

Of course it’s not based on some sort of middle-class troubled conscience, people get paid to give these bottles and cans to this women. She then returns them for profit to the factories. This isn’t anything new, we used to do the same in Europe and the US. Return your empty coke bottles and get a quarter kind of thing.

I’m not quite sure why we stopped doing this to be honest? Having a financial incentive to return bottles seems to work well - the women on our street corner rarely finishes a day without 15-20 full sacks. The homeless here even get some sort of income collecting these bottles and cans from the rubbish bags and streets. This process seems sustainable, profitable and pays wages into the local economy.

Maybe the money was too small for us to bother with in the end? I can’t imagine there is a large profit margin. However it was a shock to Anna to know that far from getting money for our old bottles, we choose to pay to have our materials collected and recycled in Brighton. Heh

Maybe our obsession with hygiene killed off this practice - these returned bottles are stream washed and re-used rather than being melted down (much like our milk bottles used to be in the UK when I was growing up).

Re-using is more environmentally friendly than recycling (less energy used) and seems safe enough. However we have a problem with re-using objects which have been in contact with strangers or used for food or drink. I’ve seen the same trend in the medical industry - everyone gets their own disposable plastic thermometer now rather than a sterile glass one. We used to re-use many items which now get put into landfills.

10 a.m. on a Sunday and 16 sacks already - well lets be honest Russians do drink quite a bit, not having a bottle recycling scheme in this country would be a tragedy!

Tags: recycling, re-using, russia, environmental, environment,

Ivanovo is only 300km away from Moscow which in any normal situation would be say 2 or 3 hours by car - poor roads make that the best part of 6 hours here. The train isn’t much better, coming in to Moscow in 5 1/2 hours. That means it’s a two day trip going to Moscow, with a rented flat for the night (thanks Rick!). So basically we wouldn’t even think twice about paying the airfare for a 30 minute journey. Even with the old Aeroflot planes used for internal flights, I have a feeling it will be safer than traveling by car…

The airport is planning to open in the fall of this year.

Tags: ivanovo, airports,

Of course it doesn’t help that other drivers in Russia never seem to dip their lights for oncoming traffic but Anna is still rather a new driver.

Anyway - at one point during the journey we had a particularly large Russia truck come towards us with his lights blazing, one sway from Anna and SMACK - it took out mirror out.

Yep, I can hear what you’re thinking, that truck did come quite close to do that. He carried on blowing his air-horn for a while as he went past us but it’s fair to say we came off worse.

Anna and I have decided we’ll try and drive more during the daytime (!) but we’re looking at other ideas too. Dad suggested squinting one eye, much like we were trained to do in the CCF with flares and night-ops. Mum suggests night driving glasses? Anyone else got any inspired ideas?

The United States has asked Russia to waive the diplomatic immunity of a Russian diplomat who is accused of drunk driving and hitting a New York City policeman.

A spokesman for the U.S. mission at the United Nations said the request concerns Ilya Morozov, a diplomat at Russia’s U.N. mission.

Russia has not yet responded to the request.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject on immunity from international prosecution though, it was hard enough to get the US subject to war crime trials. They had previously threatened to veto UN peacekeeping operations if its demands for exemption from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague were not met.

They had also tried blackmailing several countries into supporting them on that position by threatening to withdraw aid. The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib put the end to any support the US had on this issue.

So no, I don’t think Russia is going to fall over itself to support you on this one. Bad as this diplomat’s behavior was, if the situation was reversed, would you really expect the US administration to let one of their citizens be put on trial here?

Tags: Russia, America, US, diplomat,