You're reading: Kuzmin: We can prove Kuchma’s involvement in Gongadze murder

First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said investigators have evidence that former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma is involved in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000.

When asked if prosecutor’s
office can prove Kuchma was the one who ordered the murder of
muckraking journalist, Kuzmin told Ekho
Moskvy
radio station that they have
“enough proof” to say Kuchma was
involved, and that investigation is ongoing.

Prosecutors
briefly opened a criminal case against the former president in 2011,
accusing
him of abuse of office and ordering a murder. It was closed soon on a
technicality, the court never examined the essence of accusations
against Kuchma.

Kuzmin
said that previously charges against Kuchma
were dropped because they were based on the secret
recordings of his former guard
Mykola Melnychenko’s, which were made illegally
and could not serve as proof in court, indicating that now the
prosecutors have more evidence.

On Jan. 29 Pechersk
District Court in Kyiv convicted the
former chief of the Interior Ministry’s surveillance department,
Oleksiy Pukach, to life in prison for
murdering journalist Gongadze in 2001.

When leaving the
court, Pukach was asked by the judge if he
understood the verdict. He replied: “I will understand when Kuchma
and [his former chief of staff Volodymyr] Lytvyn are
in the cage with me.”

Both Kuchma and Lytvyn
were recorded on Melnychenko’s tapes discussing Gongadze. Kuchma, in
particular, was caught giving an order to “throw him out. Give him
to the Chechens.”

The two politicians were
also implicated in testimony given by Pukach during the closed trial,
according to the lawyer of Gongadze’s widow. They have both denied
their involvement.

Pukach
said he had been told to carry out the murder by then-Interior
Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, who was acting on orders from Kuchma and
Lytvyn. Kravchenko was found dead in 2005 from two gunshot wounds to
the head in what investigators called a suicide.