You're reading: Prosecutor’s Office have no information about case against Kuchma on Gongadze murder

The press service of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has no information about a criminal case allegedly opened against former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005) connected with the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.

Some Internet publications reported on Monday, citing sources close to the Prosecutor General’s Office, that the office had opened a criminal case against Kuchma connected with the case on the murder of journalist Gongadze.

"The press service has no information about this, and we cannot comment on anything," spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office Yuriy Boichenko told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

Valentyna Telychenko, the lawyer for Gongadze’s widow Myroslava Gongadze, in turn, said that she could neither confirm nor deny this information, because she had not been officially informed about such a resolution.

"I can neither confirm nor deny this, because officially I was not informed about this," she told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze disappeared in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. In November 2000, a decapitated body was found in the woods near Kyiv, which experts concluded might have been the journalist’s.

The body remains unburied, as the journalist’s mother, Lesia Gongadze, has refused to have it interred until its head is found.

In May 2010, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko said that the remains of a skull found in the Kyiv region in July 2009 belonged to Gongadze.

In 2008, three former officers from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s outdoor surveillance and criminal intelligence department, Col. Valeriy Kostenko, Col. Mykola Protasov, and Maj. Oleksandr Popovych, were found guilty of killing Gongadze.

Pukach, who was long on the wanted list, was arrested in Zhytomyr region in July 2009, as a result of a joint operation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office.

On July 23, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv decided to remand Pukach, who was charged with being involved with Gongadze murder, in custody.

On January 31, 2011, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv declared legal an order by the Prosecutor General’s Office to close a criminal case against Pukach, who was accused of the premeditated murder of journalist Gongadze. The court announced its ruling on a lawsuit filed by Telychenko and Podolsky.

The court said that the plaintiffs’ proofs of Pukach’s involvement in the murder were evaluative, and the investigator followed the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine.

On February 7, 2011, Telychenko appealed to the Court of Appeals in Kyiv against a ruling by Pechersky District Court of Kyiv declaring legal the closure of the criminal case against Pukach.

On March 2, 2011, the Court of Appeals in Kyiv upheld the legality of the closure by the Prosecutor General’s Office of a criminal case against Pukach concerning his executing an order to kill Gongadze.