Scandal could reveal yet more duped by recordings
Just ahead of the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of journalist Georgy Gongadze, the Prosecutor General’s Office has announced the completion of an analysis conducted by a squad of international forensic audio experts on 30 hours of recordings made in President Leonid Kuchma’s office during 1999 and 2000. According to a Lithuanian member of the working group, Dernardas Shalna, two specialists from Russia and three from Ukraine used $850,000 worth of new phonoscope equipment to conduct the analysis, which is unlikely to clear up the mystery surrounding recordings implicating the president in a host of crimes, including the murder of the muckraking journalist.Audio experts from the European Academy of Forensic Science and European Network of Institutes (ENFSI), and Kyiv’s Institute of Forensic Science took seven months to complete their study. “The report is done and we expect to receive the conclusions soon,” said PGO spokesman Serhiy Rudenko, who on Aug. 30 would not say how, when or if the results would ever be made public.
Tapegate reduxThe release of a 24-minute analog tape on Nov. 28, 2000 by Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz triggered Ukraine’s worst political crisis in history. The cassette contained a dozen excerpts of digitally recorded conversations mentioning Gongadze, who disappeared on September 16, 2000. Moroz has claimed repeatedly that he received the snippets from former presidential guard Mykola Melnychenko on Oct. 15, 2000 two weeks before the journalist’s decapitated corpse was found outside of Kyiv. Melnychenko and his family fled Ukraine on Nov. 26, 2000 with a new computer and a bag of CDs containing recordings made in Kuchma’s office. The ex-guard said that he made all the recordings single-handedly using a pocket-sized digital recorder placed underneath the president’s couch. The United States granted Melnychenko refugee status on April 12, 2001 two days after he was questioned in Prague by three agents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Learning to typeBusinessman and entrepreneur Volodymyr Tsvil took the ex-guard to the Czech Republic at the invitation of Socialist Party supporter Volodymyr Boldanyuk, a Czech citizen, who hid the guard for four and a half months. Melnychenko’s audio archive – comprising some 35 CDs containing an estimated 700 hours of recordings – was kept separately by Boldanyuk, who periodically brought discs to the ex-guard to be transcribed and analyzed. The discs remained with Boldanyuk after Melnychenko flew to America on April 15, 2001. Tsvil told the Post that Melnychenko spent the first two months in hiding learning how to type. He said he first used a computer only to play back the recordings, which he transcribed laboriously by hand.The transcripts are incorrectly dated and filled with errors, indicating that Melnychenko was either tin-eared or completely unfamiliar with the voices on the recordings in question. By January 2001 the ex-guard had only copied and pasted some 30 hours of digital recordings, which he turned over to Socialist Party member Mykola Rudkovsky.Copies of these recordings on Feb. 1, 2001 were given to the International Press Institute (IPI) and later made public through an Internet project funded by Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.An additional 30 hours of Melnychenko’s audio files later appeared on 5element.net, a site created in September 2002 by former parliament deputy Oleksandr Zhyr.While in hiding, Melnychenko frequently mentioned the name of a close friend, Semen Savchenko, who allegedly “worked with” him on the recordings in Kyiv. Savchenko fled Ukraine to Portugal on Nov. 10, 2000. He has not returned.
SBU gets copiesFew who covered the sensational ‘Gongadzegate’ and ‘Tapegate’ scandals in 2001 and 2002 questioned the reports which ignored recordings made in the president’s office after Gongadze disappeared.“All 700 hours of recordings – especially those made after Sept. 16, 2000 – need to be examined to assess whether Kuchma masterminded Gongadze’s murder or was set up to take the fall,” says Olexiy Stepura, who has worked with the Post to dig up and corroborate new facts about the case. Boldanyuk and Tsvil said that in May 2002 they gave copies of 20 of Melnychenko’s CDs to the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) hoping that they would better enable officials in Kyiv to protect the country’s remaining secrets and find those who orchestrated Gongadze’s disappearance.SBU spokespersons on Aug. 31 refused to confirm or deny whether they received the CDs, referring the Post to the Prosecutor General’s Office for comment. None was forthcoming.
Selling the archiveTsvil, who has been in touch with Melnychenko over the years, accompanied the ex-guard at meetings in January 2004 with Ukrainian officials to negotiate terms for bringing the entire audio archive back to Kyiv. The most recent rendezvous took place on Feb. 24, 2004 in Vienna with presidential assistant Serhiy Levochkin and presidential administration security director Volodymyr Lyashko, who brought $500,000 as an incentive.“The offer was not accepted,” Tsvil told the Post, which on Aug. 13 published photographic evidence of Melnychenko’s meeting with State Security Service (SBU) agents after the rendezvous.
Analyzing it allThe Post has obtained and listened to the IPI and 5element.net recordings, which do implicate top officials, including Kuchma, in various crimes, including the unlawful arrest and imprisonment of Sloviansky Bank founder Borys Feldman, harassment of government critics and other shenanigans, including vote rigging during the 1999 presidential election.The 60 hours of audio files also contain sensitive information about Ukraine’s sales of military hardware abroad, the state of the country’s law enforcement and intelligence services, and the State Tax Administration, as well as invaluable facts about relations between Kuchma and important foreign leaders. The audio files do not, however, contain conversations indicating that Kuchma specifically ordered Gongadze to be kidnapped or murdered. Such conversations may – or may not – be contained in the 640 hours of unreleased recordings that follow Gongadze’s disappearance.
Opposition politicians, including presidential candidate Oleksandr Moroz, have been less than eager to assist Stepura or the Post in their on-going investigation of the facts. Moroz, who knew in early 2000 that Melnychenko was bugging Kuchma’s office, refused to comment. His Socialist Party colleagues, meanwhile, confided to the Post that their leader has “fallen out of love” with the scandal he inspired.Melnychenko, like Moroz, also has refused comment, and in August threatened to sue the Kyiv-based E-zine Hlavred for publishing Tsvil’s recollections about his role in the affair.Even Hrihory Omelchenko, the parliament deputy currently chairing the ad hoc commission “investigating Gongadze’s disappearance and other crimes,” appeared less than eager to pursue new leads, including previously unreleased and untranscribed audio files obtained by the Post in Munich this summer. “I’m all booked up now,” Omelchenko said when offered to examine the new recordings. This is another article in a series made possible by support from The Danish Association for Investigative Journalism. The Kyiv Post retains full publishing rights for these articles and is not influenced in any way by the DAIJ.
