You're reading: Ukrainian authorities trying to bury Gongadze’s case

Leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine Oleksandr Moroz believes that the authorities are trying to bury the case of journalist Georgy Gongadze's murder laying a guilt trip on the late Yuriy Kravchenko, who served as interior minister.

"Why did the former minister take interest in the journalist? Why did he give (if he did give) the criminal order? What was the reason for chasing the journalists and spying on him? Who and why sought to lead him [Gongadze] the wrong way in the first weeks of the investigation through giving him false evidence? Who was obstructing the unbiased forensic examination? Why did not they take into account the large number of irrefutable evidence – the record of the conversations in the office of President Leonid Kuchma, although the investigators actually confirmed all the episodes, recorded by Major Mykola Melnychenko? Why the parliament was not controlling the investigation, as it had to, failing to comply with the requirements of PACE (only once, under my chairmanship, parliament heard the reports of heads of relevant departments)?" Moroz said in a statement published by the Socialist Party’s press office on Tuesday.

The politician recalled that September 16, 2010 will mark ten years since the murder of Georgy Gongadze.

"For ten years Ukraine has been demonstrating to the world the supremacy of cover-up over the law. Maintaining this tradition, the authorities are trying to uphold the honor, though everybody clearly understand that they are simply trying to divert responsibility for the involvement into the crime from high-ranking officials, in particular the ex-president and the head of his administration," he said.

It was reported earlier that Gongadze, the late editor of the Ukrayinska Pravda Web publication, 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. In May 2010, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko said that the remains of the skull found in Kyiv region in July 2009 were those of Gongadze.

On November 28, 2000, Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz publicized in parliament the tapes that appeared to implicate then President Leonid Kuchma in Gongadze’s murder.

The tapes were allegedly recorded by former Presidential Guard Mykola Melnychenko.

International experts carried out a comprehensive phonographic examination of the tapes, but their authenticity has not yet been conclusively proved.

In 2008, three former officers from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Outdoor Surveillance and Criminal Intelligence Department, Col. Valery Kostenko, Col. Mykola Protasov, and Maj. Oleksandr Popovych, were found guilty of killing Gongadze.

Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s Outdoor Surveillance Department head Oleksiy Pukach, another suspect in the case, was detained in the Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009.

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.

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.

The Prosecutor General’s Office reported on September 14, 2010, that the pre-trial investigation into journalist Georgy Gongadze’s murder allegedly by Oleksiy Pukach, and in relation to the late Yuriy Kravchenko, suspected of having ordered this crime, is drawing to an end.