You're reading: Opposition figure still detained without charge

The administration of President Leonid Kuchma is responding with time-honored tactics to an opposition drive to oust him and his government from office: a token arrest and threats to detain more people.

Mykola Sivulsky, an adviser to opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, got the message shortly before midnight on Sept. 16, when Interior Ministry officers hauled him out of bed and down to the police station for questioning.

In a statement, the Prosecutor General’s office said Sivulsky faced charges connected to embezzlement and tax evasion that ‘have caused grave consequences.’ The statement said Sivulsky was suspected of transferring more than $5 million from the accounts of state gas company Ukrgazprom to the private gas-trading company United Energy Systems.

However, as the Post went to press on Sept. 28, Sivulsky remained in detention without any formal changes filed against him. In Ukraine, authorities can legally detain a person for up to 72 hours without charges.

Sivulsky’s lawyer, Valery Yatsyuk, claimed that efforts to get information from the Interior Ministry had been stonewalled.

‘We have met complete silence from the police,’ Yatsyuk said. ‘They have not responded in any way to our verbal or written requests for information.’

Deputies friendly to Tymoshenko’s cause said the Interior Ministry had ignored a parliament-generated request for information as well. Some argued Sivulsky’s poor health combined with police silence could lead to a cover-up.

‘We will initiate the examination of that case in Verkhovna Rada’, said Hromada deputy Oleksandr Turchinov. ‘This is a political case, and we insist that the issue is physical destruction of an opposition figure, so that his death could conceal absence of real proofs of his guilt.’

The Post’s inquiries were directed to an Interior Ministry spokesman who did not return calls.

Sivulsky holds a senior post in the shadow cabinet formed last year by former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko’s Hromada party, and currently serves as an adviser to the parliament’s Budget Committee, which is chaired by Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko is leading a drive to place an impeachment bill before parliament.

Since Kuchma split with Lazarenko in June 1997, government investigators have repeatedly charged that United Energy Systems illegally siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars into overseas accounts while Lazarenko was prime minister.

During Lazarenko’s term as premier, Tymoshenko was president of UES while Sivulsky was an adviser to Lazarenko on the banking sector. Previously, Lazarenko was deputy prime minister and Sivulsky was deputy finance minister. Sivulsky’s allies and family members said the arrest and the way it was carried out showed the Kuchma administration’s willingness to use Stalinist methods against its political opponents.

‘The policemen showed no identification and made no charges,’ Lyudmila Sivulska, Sivulsky’s wife, told the Post. ‘They threatened to break down the door … told Mykola to get dressed and then hauled him away.’ She said the police wore plain clothes.

At a press conference, Sivulsky said the police had not allowed Sivulsky to take his insulin with him to treat his diabetes. She said that led to three life-threatening glucose-deficiency attacks the first weekend he was detained.

‘He received no medical attention, but was left alone in a cell,’ she said. ‘He could have died.’

Tymoshenko showed up at the Interior Ministry building where Sivulsky is being held, in Kyiv’s Pechersk district, on Sept. 19, demanding immediate access to Sivulsky for her and Yatsyuk.

She showed guards a resolution signed by over 40 parliamentary deputies (roughly the number in Hromada’s faction) branding the arrest ‘illegal and a gross violation of the constitution.’ The guards refused without explanation, Yatsyuk said.

‘They stood there silently and did not let us in,’ he said. ‘They did not say anything … in spite of all of Yulia Vladimirovna’s efforts.’

On Sept. 22, Prosecutor General Mykola Potebenko went on national television to accuse Tymoshenko of interfering with police officers engaged in the legal execution of their duties.

‘She had no right to hinder them,’ he said on the government-run UT-1 channel. ‘Even a parliamentary deputy has no right to stop the police from doing their job as indicated by law.’

Potebenko went on to say that Tymoshenko is just as guilty as Sivulsky of the crimes Sivulsky had been detained for. Potebenko previously announced that charges are being prepared against Lazarenko, but those have not been made public.

As deputies, Lazarenko and Tymoshenko can not be prosecuted without a vote by parliament to lift their immunity. Potebenko unsuccessfully petitioned parliament to lift Lazarenko’s immunity just prior to March 1998 parliamentary elections.

On Friday, Potebenko asked parliament to lift the immunity of Hromada deputy Mykola Agafonov in connection with alleged illegal currency transfers while he was director of the Dnipropetrovsk-based agricultural firm Nauka.

Yatsyuk was allowed to see Sivulsky on Sept. 21, after Sivulsky went on hunger strike, the lawyer said. He said Sivulsky was in poor condition and should be released immediately for health reasons.

Meanwhile, Tymoshenko was pressing on with efforts to get her impeachment motion on the parliament’s agenda. Tymoshenko said on Sept. 24 that her motion had the support of well over the 50 percent of deputies’ votes necessary to approve an impeachment resolution.

Tymoshenko is also gathering signatures in support of a national referendum in which voters would be asked whether Kuchma’s presidency should be cut short.

The first organizational meeting for the referendum took place in Kherson on Friday, Turchinov said. Similar meetings will be held across Ukraine within the next two months, he added.

Either proposition, if approved, would almost certainly be defied by Kuchma.

For now, Tymoshenko’s problem is bringing the impeachment issue to a vote in parliament. Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko has steadfastly refused to allow that.

Analysts say Kuchma and Tkachenko, the key figure in the leftist Peasants Party, privately struck a deal that gave Tkachenko the speaker’s position in return for a promise to quash any move in parliament to depose Kuchma or his government.