NEWSBRIEFS (08/10/03)

NEWSBRIEFS

Suspect in Gongadze murder dies

KYIV - Ihor Honcharov, a former policemen and reputed crime boss implicated in the slaying of Ukrainian opposition journalist Heorhii Gongadze, died on August 1 in an ambulance en route from jail to a hospital, Interfax reported on August 5. The news agency quoted the Institute for Mass Information (IMI), the Ukrainian branch of government watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Mr. Honcharov was to give evidence in connection with the Gongadze case to the Procurator General's Office later this month. The IMI also said it received a letter from Mr. Honcharov, to be opened in the event of his death, that it passed along to Ukrainian Procurator General Sviatoslav Piskun. Mr. Gongadze, who reported widespread corruption within the Ukrainian government and was highly critical of President Leonid Kuchma, disappeared in 1999. His headless corpse was later found buried in a forest. Ukrainian authorities have never charged anyone with Mr. Gongadze's murder. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Ukraine to purchase Kazak grain

KYIV - Ukraine intends to purchase around 1.2 million tons of Kazak grain in 2003-2004 at a price of 600-750 hrv ($112-140) per ton, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych announced after a meeting with President Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakstan in Astana on August 4, according to Interfax. Mr. Yanukovych said 800,000 tons of grain will be supplied to Ukraine under an intergovernmental agreement, while the remainder will be delivered under contracts between Ukrainian and Kazak enterprises. Ukraine is facing a harvest decimated by drought. (RFE/RL Newsline)

More Russian grain headed for Ukraine

KYIV - Russian grain supplies to Ukraine are expected to total 1 million tons in 2003-2004, according to the terms of an agreement reached during Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's visit to Moscow on August 1, Interfax reported, quoting Russian Agriculture Minister Aleksei Gordeev. Ukraine originally planned to import 200,000 tons of Russian grain, which will be supplied to the country's major industrial centers in August. The contingency supplies - up to 1 million tons total - are to start in September and hinge on how Ukraine's grain market develops, Mr. Gordeev said. He said the Russian Finance Ministry is still considering the price of the additional grain exports. Ukraine is expected to import 2.8 million tons of grain to compensate for a poor harvest this year. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Kuchma sacks more oblast chiefs

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma further asserted Kyiv's authority over regional governments on July 30, sacking the governors of the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia oblasts, respectively, Mykola Shvets and Yevhen Kartoshov, Interfax reported. The move came one day after Mr. Kuchma dismissed the chairmen of the Poltava and Chernivtsi oblasts, and one week after the government recommended those and other dismissals over perceived failings in agricultural and economic policy-making. The president also named individuals to succeed all four oblast chiefs. The replacements are: Oleksander Udovichenko (a senior bank official in Poltava prior to his appointment) in Poltava; Mykhailo Romaniv (a senior official in Ukraine's state monitoring department) in Chernivtsi; Volodymyr Yatsuba (a minister without portfolio) in Dnipropetrovsk; and Volodymyr Berezovsky (chairman of the regional council of Zaporizhia Oblast) in Zaporizhia. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Russia gets ballistic missiles from Ukraine

MOSCOW - Russia has acquired a batch of Soviet-built ballistic missiles from Ukraine, according to Russian officials. The government of Ukraine had decided last October to sell its SS-19s to Russia, and Russia's Interfax-Military News Agency reported that Ukraine had just completed their transfer. An unidentified spokesman for Ukraine's Ukrspetsexport company refused to say how many missiles Ukraine sold and how much money it earned, the agency reported. A spokesman for Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed that Russia got the missiles and said that they would join Russia's strategic arsenals. He said the missiles remained in good condition, but refused to comment on their number and other details of the deal. (Associated Press)

Anti-money laundering measures ordered

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma opened a regular meeting of the State Department for Financial Monitoring in Kyiv on July 14 by ordering increased vigilance in the fight against money laundering, Interfax reported. Long criticized by the international community for insufficient efforts to combat the trend, Mr. Kuchma ordered the creation of an integrated state-information and analytical network, the amendment by October 1 of financial and banking legislation to thwart dubious operations, greater cooperation with international bodies responsible for combating money laundering, and tighter control over resellers in Ukraine that are "the biggest claimants for VAT [value-added tax] refunds." (RFE/RL Newsline)

Polish Orthodox canonize Ukrainian martyrs

LVIV - Ukrainian martyrs from the Pidliashia and Kholm areas (now in northwestern Ukraine and Poland) were canonized in Chelm, Poland, on June 7-8. Metropolitan Sava of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church led the ceremonies. Representatives from most of the national Orthodox Churches of the world, about 100 clergy and several thousand faithful took part. Among the martyrs were a monk, six priests and the wife of one of the priests, all of whom died for the Orthodox faith from 1942 to 1945. Orthodoxy in Poland, a significant part of which is made up of ethnic Ukrainians, was almost destroyed in the borderlands of Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. This happened as a consequence of the destruction of Orthodox Church buildings by the Polish government between the world wars, World War II and persecutions in early post-war Poland. (Religious Information Service of Ukraine)

Tymoshenko cronies charged with stealing $2 B

KYIV - Ukrainian Procurator General Sviatoslav Piskun charged two former business associates of prominent opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko with illegally acquiring more than $2 billion through shady natural-gas deals and financial schemes, The Moscow Times reported. Prosecutors filed charges on June 23, claiming that Ms. Tymoshenko's former colleagues from the now-defunct company United Energy Systems of Ukraine - Ukraine's predominant gas dealer in the 1990s - illegally acquired $2.25 billion through sales of Russian natural gas. The two are also accused of hiding hard-currency revenues, stealing state assets, and tax evasion that allegedly cost the state another $216 million. The defendants, Ms. Tymoshenko's father-in-law Hennadii Tymoshenko - former president of UES of Ukraine - and former accountant Antonia Boliura were extradited from Turkey and detained in Ukraine in 2002. (RFE/RL Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch)

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