NEWS ANALYSIS
The Gongadze cover-up
by Roman Kupchinsky
RFE/RL Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch
PART II
Destroying the evidence
As the new, more vigorous, investigation in the summer of 2003 was well under way, on July 16, 2003, the Procurator General's Office officially requested that the MVS send over a set of files pertaining to the Gongadze investigation. The files that had been requested included the official work assignments in 2000. These were important for they would collaborate the testimony of those officers who admitted taking part in the Gongadze surveillance during the summer and fall of 2000. Also requested were the reports of the surveillance which were signed by members of the surveillance teams.
Sensing that the information contained in those files could discredit them or point a finger directly at the persons suspected of ordering Heorhii Gongadze's murder, a decision was made by Gen. Oleksii Pukach's superiors to deliberately destroy the requested files.
Anatolii Osypenko, an officer in the Criminal Investigation Department of the MVS, on October 28, 2003, confirmed what he had told investigators on October 13 that same year.
Mr. Osypenko claimed that on July 16, 2003, he was told to prepare a set of files requested by the Procurator General's Office pertaining to the Gongadze case. He began pulling these files, but could not complete this task due to a lack of personnel having the needed security clearance to gain access to them. He was not allowed to use employees of his section since the PGU investigator insisted that nobody working for Gen. Pukach's unit be allowed to perform this task.
The following day, July 17, Mr. Osypenko and the PGU investigator went to see Gen. Pukach about the files. Gen. Pukach told the investigator that he had orders "from above" not to give him the requested files.
Shortly after July 20, 2003, these same files were the topic of a conversation in Gen. Pukach's office.
Ludmilla Levchenko, who worked for Gen. Pukach as an assistant, was interrogated on October 10, 2003, and told PGU investigator Yurii Hryshchenko: "During a meeting in the office of Lt. Gen. Oleksii Pukach we had a conversation in which he stated that it was imperative to bring him the work assignments of employees of the Criminal Investigation Division from 2000. He studied them and said that they were to be destroyed since the dates on the documents indicated that they no longer needed to be stored.
"I replied that their term for safekeeping had not yet expired and they were to be stored until January 2004 when they could be legally destroyed Mr. Pukach insisted that all the documents be destroyed."
Question: "Were there any questions about the fact that these files had been requested by the PGU and were vital. If there were, who understood this and what was Mr. Pukach's reaction to this?"
Answer: "When I was in Mr. Pukach's and he was giving the order to destroy these documents, I asked him if this would create a problem since the documents had been requested by the PGU. He did not give a direct answer and only said that their term for safekeeping had expired and that they were to be destroyed."
The files (case No. 23, inventory Nos. 3598, 3599 and 3600) were destroyed soon afterward in the special facility maintained for this purpose in the town of Obukhov.
After the interrogations of Messrs. Levchenko and Osypenko, the PGU arrested Gen. Pukach on October 23, 2003, on charges of destroying evidence.
A week later, the president's commission on corruption met and angrily stated that Procurator Gen. Piskun was guilty of "large-scale corruption." The commission, however, never asked that he be investigated by the PGU; instead, they unanimously recommended to the president that he be fired from his position, which he was the following day.
A week after Mr. Piskun was fired, MVS Lt. Gen. Pukach was released from prison after signing a pledge not to leave the country. According to press reports, he was picked up at the entrance to the jail by a limo with parliamentary license plates.
After a few months, in a move apparently designed to show that forgiveness runs deep in his administration, Mr. Kuchma appointed Mr. Piskun to become the deputy chair of the National Security and Defense Council.
Ihor Honcharov
Among the documents obtained by Mr. Krushelnycky is the autopsy report of Ihor Honcharov. Mr. Honcharov, a former MVS officer with a checkered past, had been arrested on criminal charges by the MVS in May 2002.
After his arrest, Mr. Honcharov's lawyer managed to smuggle out of prison letters by his client which were published on the Ukrainska Pravda website on August 6, 2003. Mr. Honcharov wrote that he was ordered not to testify against other MVS officers, and that he had been tortured and beaten in prison. He died on August 1, 2003, and his body was cremated very soon after. The cause of death was officially announced as "illness."
According to The Independent of June 19, "the autopsy and tests performed for the government by six experts shows Mr. Honcharov was injected with Thiopental, which the experts say probably led to his death. Doctors have told The Independent that there would have been no legitimate medical reason to use the drug."
But the most damaging information about what Mr. Honcharov allegedly knew was learned during the interrogation of one Valerii Melnikov on April 14, 2003. Mr. Melnikov was interviewed by PGU investigator Stolyarchuk.
Melnikov: "Honcharov told me that People's Deputy Volkov O.M. had contracted the murder of Gongadze because he had written a very unfavorable article about Mr. Volkov and the president. On his own initiative he (Volkov) turned to Mr. Kysil with whom he was a longtime friend.
"Gongadze was killed by members of the "Kysil" brigade, there were three of them along with Mr. Honcharov's informant, a driver that they used.
"From Mr. Honcharov I learned that two of them soon left for the Czech Republic and the third was murdered under suspicious circumstances in Kyiv."
The identity and the whereabouts of the driver are still unknown.
Kysil and Volkov
A great deal has been written in the Ukrainian press about the activities of Volodymyr Kysil, the head of an organized crime gang in Kyiv.
The article "Everything About Alexander Mr. Volkov" written by Mr. Gongadze and published on the Ukrainska Pravda website on September 5, 2000, 11 days before his disappearance, is considered the exposé that most upset Mr. Kuchma and his close friend and campaign manager during the 1999 election, Mr. Volkov.
Gongadze wrote: "Our hero (Volkov) was born and grew up in the Stalin district of Kyiv. Alongside him grew his friend - the Kyiv criminal 'authority' Kysil. Mr. Kysil was sentenced five times for serious crimes and from the very beginning had a strong influence on Mr. Volkov."
The article stated that Messrs. Volkov and Kysil had been in business together in Kyiv.
As Mr. Kysil's name kept popping up in conjunction with the murder of Gongadze, Mr. Volkov did not deny that they knew each other, but hastened to add that he was not responsible for Mr. Kysil's actions.
On November 5, 2003, Mr. Kysil was the target of an assassination attempt when his car was blown up by a bomb in Kyiv. Mr. Kysil was injured and those responsible have not been found.
Undercover agent Muzyka
More revealing information about the killing of Gongadze was provided by MVS officer Hryhorii Serhiyenko, the head of the section of operational information collection of the MVS during his interrogation on June 5, 2003.
In his reply to a question about whether he was involved in ordering his subordinates to follow Gongadze, Mr. Serhiyenko admitted that he did in fact give such orders and that he had received his orders from Gen. Pukach directly and from his deputy Mr. Sviatenko (presently the head of a section of the tax police of Ukraine). The third person who gave Mr. Serhiyenko instructions and who was in fact the "curator" of the Gongadze operation was Prulipko O.D., Gen. Pukach's deputy.
Mr. Serhiyenko went on to tell the investigator from the PGU that during the funeral of a former official of the MVS, he was approached by Gen. Pukach who told him to forget the name Gongadze and anything that "we were involved in concerning him."
Shortly after this advice from Gen. Pukach, Mr. Serhiyenko was ordered by Mr. Prulipko to destroy all the documentation held in his section. Mr. Prulipko stated that this was old material and needed to be destroyed. The order was carried out.
Then Mr. Serhiyenko dropped a bomb on the interrogator: "I decided to help the investigation by making available information which I have about the involvement of a concrete person involved in the actual killing of the journalist Gongadze H.R."
According to Mr. Serhiyenko, a highly reliable source, Oleksander Kruzhanivsky, a former officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian military and a former undercover agent for the Main Directorate combating organized crime in the MVS, told him that the person directly linked to the killing of Gongadze was an undercover MVS operative named Oleksander Muzyka. Apparently Mr. Muzyka himself had told Mr. Kruzhanivsky that he was involved in the killing of Gongadze.
According to the Serhiyenko interrogation, Mr. Muzyka had been assigned to work undercover with the "Kysil" organized crime grouping in Kyiv in which he attained the rank of head of one subsection in the gang. In 1996 Mr. Muzyka was arrested for possession of a firearm. He was soon extricated from this charge and continued to work as an undercover agent.
When asked by Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch about the present whereabouts of Mr. Muzyka, a member of the parliamentary committee investigating the disappearance of Gongadze replied that he did not know.
The cover-up continues
After the series of articles appeared in The Independent the reaction from the Ukrainian MVS was fast and furious.
The most dramatic and least expected response was the announcement on June 22 that the MVS had the killer of Gongadze in their custody. He was identified only as "citizen K" and was described as a serial killer who had confessed to killing Gongadze. "Citizen K" had apparently been arrested on other charges and while in custody confessed to killing the journalist, along with a number of other victims.
According to the International Herald Tribune of June 23, Serhii Rudenko, the spokesman for the Procurator General's Office, stated that "During questioning, the man said he had committed the murder of Gongadze. His statement fits the circumstances of the murder at the time and other key moments which are already in the public domain he said he had decapitated him."
This claim was met by considerable skepticism. Mr. Gongadze's widow, Myroslava, responded to the announcement by telling The Independent on June 26: "This shows the cover up is continuing."
Not satisfied with finding the "killer," Mr. Rudenko announced that Mr. Honcharov was found to have been killed by a beating he received in prison and that a criminal case had been opened against the prison authorities where he was being held. Mr. Rudenko added that "all other versions of Mr. Honcharov's death are not official," the website Ukrainska Pravda reported on June 21. Why the MVS originally said that he died "of illness" was never explained by Mr. Rudenko.
The following day, June 22, the PGU office announced that it was considering opening a criminal case against those individuals (or individual) who passed over the documents cited by The Independent. According to a June 22 report by the Interfax news agency, the PGU's press service released a statement which stated that the "promulgation of part of the proof collected in the criminal case has already left a negative impact on the course of the investigation and posed a real threat to some people." This, in effect, can mean that if anyone connected to the Gongadze case is suddenly injured or killed (by a car bomb for example) or dies of "illness," the blame can then be placed on those individuals who gave the documents to Krushelnycky.
A somewhat less confrontational tone was adopted by Vasyl Baziv, the deputy head of the presidential administration on June 25. Mr. Baziv commented on allegations that President Kuchma was involved in the killing by saying: "I believe the philosophy of democracy and freedom must not cancel the fundamental basis of Roman law introducing the presumption of innocence." He was also quoted by Interfax on June 25 as saying that the articles in The Independent were a pre-election provocation, despite the fact that nowhere had there been any allegations made that any of the present presidential candidates were involved in any way with the murder of Mr. Gongadze.
President Kuchma, who had taken the Gongadze investigation under his "personal control" from its very beginning and who never announced that it had slipped out from his control, has yet to explain why he failed to prevent a massive cover-up. Legally he is at the very least responsible for the cover-up if not for other crimes in the case.
PART II
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 25, 2004, No. 30, Vol. LXXII
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