Former bikie boss Amad ‘Jay’ Malkoun says rivals may have tried to blow up car with his kids inside
A car bombing in Greece in 2019 left Amad “Jay” Malkoun with burning flesh and bloodied meat and bone where his feet once were, and the former Comancheros boss has a few theories on who was behind it.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Former Victorian Comanchero boss Amad “Jay” Malkoun believes his rivals tried to blow up his car with his three kids inside as he dropped them off at school.
And for the first time, the ex-bikie has revealed who he believes was behind the 2019 attack, when his enemies eventually succeeded in detonating a bomb in his vehicle hours later.
Jay said he heard a “loud screeching noise” from the right side of his brand new Mercedes-Benz AMG as he pulled into the school car park in Greece.
“I quickly turned off the engine and rushed the kids out of the car,” he writes in his new book, The Consultant.
“I’d never heard any car make a noise like this. I was a bit panicked that something was seriously wrong with my motor.
“I waited a few minutes before I started the car and all seemed OK. I gave the weird sound from under the bonnet no more thought.
“I had a lot on my mind that morning, but the notion that the noise could be a danger to me wasn’t one of them.”
But just hours later, after working out at a local gym, the bomb did go off.
Jay has written about the near-deadly ambush in a new book, called The Consultant, about the life and times of the former heroin trafficker, bikie and underworld fixer.
“The car landed with a heavy thud, and when I felt the shock in the suspension, I realised it must have been lifted airborne from the force of the explosion,” he said.
“I reached up and felt my ears were bleeding. First the intense smell of the flaming wreck – burning rubber and chrome. Then an unbearable stench of burning flesh hit me.”
Jay said he feared being shot by a gunman wanting to finish the job, but as he tried to flee he realised “something was wrong”.
“I looked down at my leg and saw I was standing not on my foot, but on my shinbone, just above the ankle.
“The blast had ripped through my lower legs and broken both of them off where the ankles met the foot. Now just a bloody mess where meat and bone hit the raw road. One foot was blown to the side and hung limp – it was hanging on by just a bit of skin.”
Jay managed to commando crawl from the fiery carnage, mistaking two witnesses as potential shooters as he fled, and only felt safe when paramedics loaded him into the back of an ambulance.
“I was later told the bomb was detonated remotely, which meant that someone was watching and waiting and had pressed the button to set off the blast,” he wrote.
“It occurred to me on reflection that the weird noise I’d heard my car’s engine make that morning on the school run may well have been the killer trying to activate the bomb in the school carpark with the kids still inside with me. What kind of low dog would kill three children?”
No one has ever been charged over the daylight bombing and Jay said he doesn’t know who is responsible – but he does have two main theories.
One is wrongly being blamed for the 2015 death of friend – but fierce bikie rival – Wayne Schneider.
Jay met the high-ranking Hells Angel and international crime kingpin in Dubai, where they both then lived, and regularly caught up for coffee, lunches and hit the gym together.
But it was during a holiday to Pattaya in Thailand when disaster struck.
“He booked a three-room hotel penthouse and we had a pretty chill few days. Next thing you know, there’s a full-scale party going on all around me. Wayne got on it, then I got on it, but it was all pretty civilised, very PG-rated.
“But then Wayne cracked out the liquid GHB. Next thing I know, it’s two in the morning … and Wayne’s completely lost it. It was like he was possessed, just totally insensible, screaming like an animal and throwing himself around the upstairs bathroom, all six foot four and 120 kilos of him.
“I spent the next hour just hosing Wayne down in the shower, trying to get him to come to his senses. Dude was like something from a horror movie.
“By the time I finally got him to settle and go to bed, the sun was coming up.”
That night, Wayne wanted to party again, this time with his friend Antonio ‘Tony’ Bagnato in tow.
“I wasn’t feeling good at all, as you can imagine. I’d been up all night hosing down an out-of-his-mind Hells Angel and I was feeling pretty shit,” Jay wrote.
“I crawled into bed, took a Xanax and passed out.”
He woke up to 20 Thai cops banging on the door and Wayne and Bagnato both missing. Police arrested Jay and later told him they believed Wayne had been kidnapped.
Jay said he gave the police $30k reward for “good luck” in solving the case.
“Sure enough, within six hours of receiving the incentive, they closed the case.”
“They knew exactly what was going on. Within hours of it being called in, they’d tracked the ute, cross referenced CCTV, made phone calls, identified the crooks and found the shallow roadside grave where Wayne had been buried.
“F--king horrific end for my poor mate Wayne. But after all that commotion I was free to go.”
He added: “I left Thailand with the police’s blessing, confident that I had nothing to do with what happened.
“The underworld, though, that was a different story. You have to appreciate that the Comos and the Hells Angels were fierce enemies. A lot of blood spilt on both sides, going back a generation. The fact that a Como leader like me, albeit a former one, had been in the house when an Angel was murdered wasn’t a good look. Everyone thought I’d knocked him – both sides; Comos and Hells Angels.
“I left the country without incident, but I’d never know if my being there in Wayne’s final days would come back to bite me.”
Jay said the death caused a worldwide incident.
“My brothers in London, Spain, Lebanon, Sarajevo and Australia all bridged up with anticipation of a war they thought I started. They were like, ‘Oh yeah, no issues. We get it, he was your friend. Wink wink.’”
Jay also speculates whether the car bombing was a result of him asking one too many questions about the assassination of another friend, drug trafficker John Macris, in Athens just months earlier.
Macris – who had the support and protection of the Comanchero – moved to Greece in 2013 after “things got hectic” with John ‘King of the Cross’ Ibrahim in Sydney.
Macris was shot four times from behind with a 9mm pistol as he sat in his car.
“The Comanchero were not happy. My phone was ringing off the hook over the following days, the boys keen to discover who the f--k had killed their friend. I was tasked with hitting the streets and finding out what I could about the killing.
“Bulgarian brothers Yuliyanov J Raychev Serafim and Milen Raychev were arrested. Greek authorities went on to link the hit to a Canadian chapter of the Outlaws motorcycle gang.
“Why the f--k did they have two professional Canadian shooters fly in for the hit? That’s not the Greek way.
“To add to the mystery, the key witness to the Macris murder got knocked before trial by a Mexican cartel dude.”
He added: “It was a mystery that I couldn’t seem to crack. But it seemed that my questions were making someone nervous. Perhaps we were getting too close to discovery. Maybe that’s the reason I became the target of a car bomb?”
But Jay said he is not losing any sleep over his attempted murder.
“It’s the sort of thing you could go crazy over if you spend too much time thinking about, and I have better things to do. There’s work to be done. Deals to be made.
“If there’s scores to be settled, I’ll get around to them in due course. Time’s on my side.
“They blew my legs off at the ankle, and I’m still standing.”
The Consultant by Jay Malkoun is available now by Penguin Random House Australia
Djokovic says Demon can ‘absolutely’ win Australian Open
Ten-time Australian Open winner Novak Djokovic says Aussie Alex de Minaur has the talent and drive to win this year’s title.
Concerns Angliss Hospital ICU closure may not be ‘temporary’
Hospital insiders claim the decision to ‘temporarily’ close a busy intensive care unit will pose serious risk to patient safety, forcing many to travel up to 40 minutes for life-saving treatment.