The investigation into the Georgy Gongadze murder case has been resumed, the press service for the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has reported.
"Investigative actions in the charge against [former head of the Interior Ministry’s outside surveillance department Oleksiy] Pukach have been resumed under Article 22 of the Code of Criminal Procedure," the press service said, adding that the victims and the suspects have completed familiarization with the case materials.
The Prosecutor General’s office has also officially confirmed the replacement of the head of the investigative group in charge of the Pukach case.
"The resignation of Oleksandr Kharchenko [the head of the investigative group] was signed today. He has resigned due to retirement," the press service for the Prosecutor General’s Office, reported, adding that Kharchenko has been replaced with Vladyslav Hryschenko, an investigator with the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Responding to a question as to whether this will affect the investigation, the press service said: "All our staff members are high-class professionals."
Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A beheaded corpse was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000, and experts concluded that it was likely Gongadze’s. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko said in May 2010 that the skull fragments found in the Kyiv region in July 2009 were those of Gongadze.
In 2008, three former officers from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Outdoor Surveillance and Criminal Intelligence Department, Col. Valeriy Kostenko, Col. Mykola Protasov, and Maj. Oleksandr Popovych, were found guilty of killing Gongadze. Pukach, another suspect in the case, was detained in the Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009.
On March 4, 2005 the ex-Interior Minister 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.
The Prosecutor General’s Office in February 2007 closed the investigation "in the absence of elements essential to the crime." It claimed Kravchenko had committed suicide. Following the first shot, which was not fatal, Kravchenko remained conscious and fired a second shot. Investigators failed to find the notebook, a sheet of which the ex-minister used to write the last letter.
