Region: Implicated in murder

By Yuriy Onyshkiv, Peter Byrne, Olesia Oleshko and John Marone

For the Kyiv Post

It took 10 years, but Ukrainian prosecutors have finally concluded what many others have suspected for a long time: Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko ordered former police chief Oleksiy Pukach, to kill journalist Georgiy Gongadze on Sept. 16, 2000.

But the case doesn't end there and could reignite into a major scandal - the kind that, right after Gongadze's murder, helped turn the nation against former President Leonid Kuchma, whose authoritarian rule lasted from 1994 to 2005.

Along with the prosecutors' findings, announced Sept. 14, came fresh disclosures that Gongadze's murder and the subsequent cover-up may have reached Kuchma, who left office nearly six years ago, and his former chief of staff, Volodymyr Lytvyn, now the speaker of Parliament.

Their involvement in Gongadze's murder has also long been suspected. Both Kuchma and Lytvyn this week, however, repeated their longstanding denials of involvement. They also ratcheted up their own accusations, blaming the journalist's death on an international conspiracy designed to damage Ukraine.

The fresh evidence implicating Kuchma and Lytvyn allegedly comes from Pukach, who has been jailed since his July 21, 2009 arrest in the case after several years as a fugitive. Investigators say Pukach, who took charge of police surveillance against Gongadze, has been cooperating and has given an extensive confession.

Pukach is expected to eventually stand trial on charges that he led three police subordinates - who have all been convicted and are now serving prison sentences - in the gruesome kidnapping, strangulation and beheading of Gongadze.

Valentyna Telychenko, a lawyer representing Gongadze's widow, Myroslava, said Sept. 16 that Pukach's testimony implicates both Kuchma and Lytvyn.

Citing investigators' transcripts, Telychenko said Pukach claims that, in a meeting with Lytvyn and Kravchenko the day after Gongadze's murder, Kravchenko told Lytvyn, "Volodymyr Mykhailovych [Lytvyn], this is our worker who personally took care of Gongadze."

According to Pukach, Kravchenko also patted him on the shoulder and said to Lytvyn, "Tell the president that we shall fulfill any of his orders."

While Pukach's credibility may be questionable, the jailed police commander's version of events is also supported by the so-called "Melnychenko tapes," the hundreds of hours of conversations in Kuchma's office that were secretly recorded by former presidential bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko.

The tapes capture numerous alleged crimes involving Kuchma from 1999 and 2000, when Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz publicly released excerpts of the recordings involving Gongadze.

On those Melnychenko tapes, whose authenticity is disputed by Kuchma and others implicated on them, the former president, Lytvyn, Kravchenko, former Security Services of Ukraine Head Leonid Derkach and other top-ranking officials discuss ways to silence Gongadze.

The journalist had angered the administration with his critical reporting on corruption for the online news site he founded, Ukrainska Pravda, which is now among the nation's leading news sources.

Besides repeating their longstanding denials, Kuchma and Lytvyn this week alleged that they and the nation are victims of an international conspiracy. Kuchma implied the United States was to blame.

"It's an international scandal designed to compromise Ukraine," Kuchma was quoted by UNIAN as saying Sept. 15. "They didn't give me or Ukraine any peace for five years."

The former Ukrainian president said foreign secret services were involved in Gongadze's disappearance. He added that agents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were present at [anti-presidential] demonstrations following Gongadze's disappearance.

"This was paid for. Money makes everything possible," Kuchma said. He then went on to say that he is satisfied the United States, under President Barack Obama, is no longer trying to spread democracy around the globe.

In an interview, Lytvyn said Sept. 15 that the investigators' findings exonerate him. He also blamed Gongadze's murder on an international conspiracy.

"The investigation confirmed that I have nothing to do with this [Gongadze] case. I believe that all these events were directed also from outside of Ukraine and directed also by special services," Lytvyn said.

These comments appear to show that Lytvyn either knows inner details of the investigation, or he is very confident that he will not be considered a suspect despite Pukach's testimony alleging his involvement.

Kravchenko is, of course, unable to help sort out the dispute. The nation's former top police official, a close and longtime confidant of Kuchma, died from two gunshot wounds to the head March 4, 2005, in his suburban Koncha Zaspa home. The mysterious death was officially ruled a suicide, a version long disputed by Kravchenko's relatives.

As mourners lit candles on Independence Square Sept. 16 to mark the 10th anniversary of Gongadze's murder, the same questions remain as strong a decade later: Who ordered the murder, and are state investigators committed to solving the crime without fear or favor, regardless of where the evidence leads?

The wrap-up of the pre-trial investigation Sept. 7 only means the case will be transferred to court, where judges could order further investigation. More investigation is what advocates for Gongadze's relatives and their representatives want.

Telychenko has started looking through the voluminous files involving Pukach's testimony that investigators released to her this week. She believes Pukach's version of the Sept. 17, 2000 meeting with Kravchenko and Lytvyn clearly implicates the Parliament speaker and Kuchma in both the crime and the cover-up.

Hanna Herman, President Viktor Yanukovych's aid, said that the administration wants a credible investigation to be concluded but is not sure if it is possible.

"The case should be carried out objectively, so that the Ukrainian and international community believe in the results of the investigation," Herman said. "I don't know if it's possible given the wasted opportunities."

 Myroslava Gongadze, the widow of the slain journalist and the mother of their twin teenage daughters, is now a journalist with Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She thinks Kravchenko is a convenient scapegoat.

"Still, he is a thread that leads us to the top state officials of that time, Kuchma and Lytvyn," she said. "Kravchenko didn't have any personal reasons to kill Georgiy, so it implies that he got the order from top officials."

Even if it is difficult to prove Kuchma's complicity in the murder, the former president is still responsible for appointing and promoting "a criminal" who gave orders to terrorize the people, Myroslava Gongadze said.

Despite three presidential administrations and a changing cast of prosecutors and investigators, incremental progress has been made in the Gongadze case.

In 2008, three police officers who participated in the kidnapping and murder of Gongadze were convicted of the crime and sentenced to at least 12 years in prison.

On July 21, 2009, authorities found Pukach - who allegedly supervised the murder - living in a rural area of Zhytomyr Oblast west of Kyiv.

Kravchenko ran the powerful Interior Ministry, which oversees the nation's police officers, from 1995 until early 2001. Kuchma reputedly brought him in to stop the rampant mafia-style murders and contract killing that marred life in newly independent Ukraine. Gangsters - and those who hired them - were fighting for control of businesses that were suddenly up for grabs after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Kravchenko's death isn't the only suspicious one among officials implicated in the Gongadze murder. Eduard Fere and Yuriy Dagaev, other top officials close to Kuchma and Kravchenko, also died mysteriously. Fere went into a coma in 2003 and died six years later. Dagaev died, allegedly of a heart attack, in 2003.

Melnychenko, the former Kuchma bodyguard whose tapes triggered an international scandal, has damaged his credibility over the last decade with conflicting, evasive and unreliable comments about the Gongadze case and the recordings he allegedly made. The whereabouts of the original recordings are unknown.

The writers can be reached at news@praguepost.com