You're reading: SBU completes investigation into case against Melnychenko

The central investigation department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has completed an investigation into a criminal case against former State Guard Department Major Mykola Melnychenko regarding the divulging of state secrets. 

 “The central investigation department of the Security Service of Ukraine has completed the pre-trial investigation into the criminal case against Ukrainian citizen Melnychenko. On December 26 Melnychenko and his defense counsel finished studying the materials of the pre-trial investigation, and on the same day the indictment was sent for the approval to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine,” the press center of the SBU reported on Wednesday.

In November 2000, a scandal broke in Ukraine after the parliament announced there were audio recordings allegedly made by Melnychenko in the office of then President Leonid Kuchma. Melnychenko was charged with divulging state secrets, exceeding his powers and using forged documents.

In September 2011, Melnychenko was put on the wanted list. A court in Kyiv ordered that he be remanded in custody, as Melnychenko had skipped bail and absconded.

Melnychenko was arrested in Italy on August 3. On August 14, an appellate court in Naples decided to release him.

On September 14, 2012 Melnychenko told a briefing in the United States that, on sensational audio tapes published by him, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko was named as the person who had commissioned the murder of businessman Yevhen Scherban, and that Petro Kyrychenko, a business partner of Lazarenko, and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, had paid for the crime.

Melnychenko was detained at Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport on October 24, where he had arrived on a flight from New York.

On October 26, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky District Court released him on bail of UAH 76,500, which is around $9,600, and obliged him to report any change of residence to the investigator.