You're reading: Investigator may still have questions to Kuchma in Gongadze case

First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin has said that investigators will still examine the involvement of Ukraine's second president (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma in the events related to the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.

In an interview with BBC Ukrainian, Kuzmin said that Gongadze’s murder case is being investigated and if there are enough grounds for bringing Leonid Kuchma to justice, this will be done.

"I personally do not doubt that there will be questions to Kuchma and the investigator will have to return to the issue of his participation in the events related to the death of journalist Gongadze," the first deputy prosecutor general said.

He recalled that the court overturned the order to institute criminal proceedings against Kuchma.

"This means that the investigation against Kuchma cannot be conducted any longer. However, this does not mean that criminal proceedings cannot be instituted against the ex-president under other articles of the Criminal Code or on other grounds," Kuzmin added.

He also said that the trial of former Chief of the External Surveillance Department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Oleksiy Pukach cannot be open to public, because Pukach worked in intelligence and some documents and information on the criminal case are classified.

"The case is nearing completion and I think very soon we will get the verdict," Kuzmin concluded.

Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A decapitated corpse, which experts have claimed could be that of Gongadze, was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000. In May 2010 Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko stated that fragments of a skull found in July 2009 in Kyiv region belonged to Gongadze.

On November 28, 2000, Ukrainian Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz published a transcript of several tapes pointing to the involvement of then Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and other officials in a number of high-profile crimes, including the Gongadze murder. The tapes also contained evidence of pressure being put on other Ukrainian politicians and journalists.

On March 4, 2005 ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko was found dead in his home at Koncha-Zaspa outside Kyiv with two gunshot wounds in his head. A day earlier, he had been questioned as part of the inquiry into the Gongadze murder.

In 2008, three former officers from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry External Surveillance and Criminal Intelligence Department, Col. Valeriy Kostenko, Col. Mykola Protasov, and Maj. Oleksandr Popovych, were found guilty of killing Gongadze. Former head of the Interior Ministry’s External Surveillance Department Oleksiy Pukach, another suspect in the case, was detained in the Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009.

The criminal case against Kuchma for his involvement in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze was opened on March 21, 2011. The second Ukrainian president is charged with exceeding his authority and giving unlawful instructions to Interior Ministry officials, which subsequently led to Gongadze’s murder.

On December 13, 2011, Kyiv Pechersky District Court cancelled an order by the Prosecutor General’s Office to open a criminal case Kuchma on suspicion of his involvement in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.