You're reading: Prosecutor: Kuchma under investigation as suspect in Gongadze’s murder

First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin announced on March 22 that former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma is formally a suspect in the unsolved Sept. 16, 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, who was kidnapped by ex-police officers, beaten, strangled and then beheaded and buried before his body was found months later outside of Kyiv.

The disclosure marks a belated but major development in the case that has damaged the nation’s image for more than a decade and that became the leading symbol of the lawlessness and impunity of the Kuchma era.

"Today, Kuchma is suspected of exceeding authority in giving illegal orders to Interior Ministry officials that led, as a result, to the murder of a journalist."

First Deputy Prosecutor Renat Kuzmin.

However, critics including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, citing years of stonewalling and cover-up, said prosecutors under President Viktor Yanukovych are not serious about seeking justice in the case. Kuchma and Yanukovych are allies.

Kuchma, who ruled in an authoritarian manner from 1994-2005, has long been suspected of involvement in the murder of Gongadze, a hard-hitting independent journalist who founded the popular Ukrainska Pravda news website. Kuchma has always denied involvement and implied that foreign powers, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, were behind attempts to smear him.

Kuzmin confirmed in a news conference that Kuchma is suspected of organizing the murder. "Questions about classifications of this crime and blame are not questions of this day. Today, Kuchma is suspected of exceeding authority, in giving illegal orders to Interior Ministry officials, that led, as a result, to the murder of a journalist."

Kuzmin also said that he is also investigating Kuchma in the alleged beating of former journalist Oleksiy Podolsky, who was kidnapped in June 2000 in a manner similar to what happened to Gongadze three months later. In May 2007, the Kyiv Court of Appeals sentenced two former employees of the main department of criminal investigation of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to three years in prison for this crime.

Kuchma could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Kuchma’s charitable Ukraine Foundation, press secretary Mykhailo Maly, had no comment.

However, Kuchma and former chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn — now the speaker of parliament — were allegedly caught on tape in 2000 plotting ways to silence Gongadze. Kuchma and Lytvyn have vehemently denied the authenticity of the tapes, but leaked testimony by jailed suspect Oleksiy Pukach — a former Interior Ministry general — also allegedly implicates the pair. Moreover, Pukach’s former lawyer, Oleh Musienko, said that his onetime client implicated the pair in the murder and believes they should stand trial.

Musienko said that Pukach told investigators that former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, who died suspiciously from two gunshot wounds to the head on March 4, 2005, former deputy Mykhailo Dzhiha (now governor of Vinnitsa Oblast) and Lytvyn met In Kravchenko’s Kyiv office on Sept. 17, 2000, the day after Gongadze’s murder.

“Pukach told me that he was introduced to Lytvyn at that meeting as ‘the man who carried out the order to get rid of Gongadze,’” Musienko said. “Pukach told me that Kravchenko then asked Lytvyn to pass on to former President Leonid Kuchma that his subordinates would carry out any order.”

Pukach’s three subordinates – Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych – were convicted in March 2008 and sentenced to 12-13 years in prison.

Pukach went into hiding from 2003 until police caught up with him hiding out in rural Zhytomyr Oblast on July 21, 2009. He has been jailed ever since then. Announced dates for his trial keep getting postponed.

At the March 22 press conference, Kuzmin also said that the hundreds of hours of tapes, released by former presidential bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko and igniting an international scandal in 2000, are part of the evidence in the case. The prosecutor also didn’t rule out that Lytvyn could become a suspect.

The prosecutor’s announcement gives new validity to the Melnychenko tapes, including taped conversations involving Kuchma and other top-level officials who allegedly plotted numerous crimes, not only the Gongadze murder.

“Take care of him,” a voice that sounds like Kuchma’s said on a recording dated June 12, 2000. In another recording, an irate Kuchma reportedly said of Gongadze: “We need some Chechens to kidnap him for ransom.” In fact, if the Melnychenko tapes are to be believed, Kuchma ran Ukraine more like a criminal boss than as the leader of a democratic nation.

The latest developments follow a chain of disclosures over the years that leads to Kuchma

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka, for example, concluded on Dec. 7: “The pre-trial investigation has established that, on the night of Sept. 16, 2000, Oleksiy Pukach under instructions from Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko and other officials, and in preliminary agreement with a group of persons, committed the premeditated murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, because the victim was fulfilling public and journalistic duties.”

However, given nearly 11 years of stonewalling, cover-ups and incompetence in the murder investigation of Gongadze, many are skeptical that prosecutors are serious about conducting a credible investigation against Kuchma and Lytvyn.

Tymoshenko, who has publicly said that enough evidence exists to put Kuchma and Lytvyn on trial for the murder, derided the March 22 press conference as a show to convince the public that the Yanukovych administration is not engaged in selective criminal prosecution of political enemies only.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov, a Tymoshenko ally, said: "I can predict only one thing: that under this leadership we are unlikely to see those charged or found guilty by a court to be the real ones who organized and ordered the murder of Gongadze. Cases involving real action towards the real orchestrators of the Gongadze murders were opened and then later closed."

Valentyna Telychenko, the lawyer for Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, believes that prosecutors have behaved inconsistently, evidence of political pressure on the criminal case.

"Sooner or later, the Prosecutor General’s Office had to determine whether there was evidence of a crime in the actions of Kuchma. However, the actions of the prosecutor’s office are very inconsistent," Telychenko told Interfax-Ukraine, commenting on the opening of the criminal case against Kuchma.

Telychenko stressed that, until recently, the prosecutor’s office had been arguing that this was not a premeditated murder committed by Pukach, the former chief of the external surveillance department at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and ordered by other persons. The prosecutors were even putting pressure on judges in this matter, the lawyer said.

"This indicates that the actions of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine were influenced by politics and political interests," Telychenko said. "There are grounds to institute criminal proceedings against Kuchma."

Podolsky, the former journalist who almost met the same fate as Gongadze, also believes that Kuchma and Lytvyn are behind the journalist’s murder.

"I trust former Kuchma security guard Mykola Melnychenko’s tapes, which confirm that Lytvyn and Kuchma ordered the killing of Gongadze," Podolsky said. "Regarding their motive, Lytvyn and Kuchma did not like Gongadze’s criticism of the Russia-style power grab they were doing."

Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based free speech watchdog, issued a statement welcoming the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office decision to open a criminal investigation but expressing doubts about judicial independence in Ukraine.

The statement said:

"It is the first time that the prosecutor’s office has decided to consider tape recordings made by former presidential bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko as evidence. In the recordings, a voice resembling Kuchma’s can be heard referring to the need to get rid of Gongadze. Deputy prosecutor general Renat Kuzmin announced today that Kuchma is being investigated for suspected ‘abuse of authority’ and ‘illegal orders to Interior Ministry officials that resulted in [Gongadze’s] death. Kuchma has been forbidden to leave the country until the investigation has been completed. We hail the fact that a leading figure is finally being investigated in connection with this case. Now that they are on the right road, the judicial authorities should not stop there as the names of several other senior officials have been mentioned in connection with the Melnychenko recordings. Should this investigation be taken as a sign that there is finally a real desire to shed light on Gongadze’s death? We hope so. But we have every reason to remain extremely cautious about a case that has seen so many contradictory developments in the past 10 years. The latest example was on March 3, when a court upheld a decision to downgrade the definition of Gongadze’s death from ‘commissioned murder’ to a less serious one implicating only a now-dead official. Today’s announcement has not dispelled our doubts about judicial independence in this case. Reporters Without Borders will continue to follow developments closely. It would be completely intolerable if this new investigation were to lead into another dead end, or if it were to be carried out hastily with the sole aim of absolving former senior officials."