Evidence is shelved as politicians interfere with cases
Investigators say they long ago solved the infamous case of the transit server used to falsify the 2004 presidential election results, triggering the Orange Revolution four years ago this month.
But, as with so many cases of high-level corruption and crime in Ukraine, political interference stopped the case cold.
The transit server was allegedly built into the computer network of the Central Election Committee, the government agency in charge of elections, and used for changing incoming results from polling stations before they were transferred to the main computer and made public.
In the Nov. 21, 2004, runoff election between Victor Yanukovych and Victor Yushchenko, the beneficiary of the vote fraud was Yanukovych – the choice of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and the Kremlin.
But when election authorities announced Yanukovych as the winner, Ukrainians didn’t buy it. They revolted en masse, leading to street demonstrations, a Supreme Court victory and a new election on Dec. 26, 2004, that was won by Yushchenko.
But the people who allegedly ordered the fraud – even though the suspects were named as early as 2005 – have yet to stand trial for the crime against the nation, feeding widespread feelings of betrayal and disenchantment among Ukrainians.
Last month, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, acting head of the State Security Service, known by the Ukrainian SBU acronym, said his agency has established who organized the intrusion into the CEC’s computer systems in 2004. “We’re not naming names, but that doesn’t mean that the materials will not be handed over to the courts,” Nalyvaichenko told Segodnya newspaper. “I hope this will occur in the near future.”
But while Nalyvaichenko refrained from pointing the finger, Oleh Rybachuk, a close ally of Yushchenko, said as far back as 2005 that Victor Medvedchuk, Serhiy Kivalov and Serhiy Klyuyev “should be looking for lawyers.”
The millionaire lawyer Medvedchuk was head of President Leonid Kuchma’s administration in 2004. Kivalov headed the Central Election Committee. Klyuyev, close to Yanukovych, is an oligarch and parliament deputy from the Party of the Regions.
Nalyvaichenko’s statement came days after the SBU interviewed Medvedchuk, making him the highest former public official to be questioned in the case that has also been investigated by the prosecutor general’s office.
Askold Krushelnycky, a former Kyiv Post editor, detailed Medvedchuk’s reputed involvement in electoral fraud in the book “An Orange Revolution: A Personal Journey Through Ukraine’s History.”
Wrote Krushelnycky: “Ukraine’s SBU intelligence forces were, secretly and unofficially, furnishing the opposition with excerpts from conversations they claimed were recorded between key Yanukovych campaign staff which seemed to bear out suspicions that results from regional election centers that were supposedly being transmitted directly to CEC headquarters were, in fact, first going to a computer terminal controlled by one of presidential administration chief Medvedchuk’s underlings. There the result was adjusted in Yanukovych’s favor before being sent on to the CEC. One recording of conversations between senior Yanukovych campaign staff and important election commission figures concerned the access codes needed to tap into the election computer system.”
Another purported conversation, shortly before the result was officially announced, contained what were identified as the voices of Medvedchuk and Yuriy Levenets, a Yanukovych campaign staffer, discussing CEC Chairman Serhiy Kivalov’s failing nerve.
Levenets: “Greetings on democracy’s holiday!”
Medvedchuk: “The same to you, Yura. [Kivalov] is panicking. He says he’s not getting anything.”
Levenets: “He can’t be getting anything. The boys are finishing up now; he’ll have it all momentarily – literally in 15-20 minutes.”
Medvedchuk: “But he says that something’s broken down.”
Levenets: “No, it’s all fine. He can’t have anything right now. He doesn’t have any information at all over there. It’s all under my control.”
“The recordings showed that the real controls were at a secret location and the person operating the computer at CEC headquarters was like one of the monkeys in the early space programs – the chimp rode at the pinnacle of some very sophisticated technology but, despite the illusion, controlled nothing,” Krushelnycky wrote. “This was a high-tech interpretation of Stalin’s maxim that it was irrelevant who people voted for, the important thing was who counted the vote.”
Four years after, Krushelnycky blames Yushchenko for stalling the prosecution of electoral fraud as part of a deal with Yanukovych, who the president in 2004 accused of “committing criminal acts against Ukraine’s people.”
But far from being charged, Medvedchuk has been reinstated to the High Council of Justice, a judicial oversight body that hires and fires judges.
The other alleged participants in the scams are doing well also.
Kivalov sits in parliament with the Party of Regions and chairs the legal justice committee. In an outrageous irony to many, Kivalov was awarded a medal by the CEC last year for his “contribution to guaranteeing… constitutional electoral rights.”
Klyuyev and his brother purchased Prominvestbank, one of the largest Ukrainian banks that took a hard hit as the financial crisis unfolded this autumn.
The only person who was temporarily detained in the transit server case was the head of the CEC’s computer department who worked at the CEC under Kivalov. But he was promptly released by a court. Another key suspect in the case has fled to Russia.
One of the people who helped uncover the fraud – and in so doing risked his own life in 2004 – was Ruslan Knyazevych. He was one of three CEC members who refused to sign off on election results. Taking the stand in the Supreme Court, he testified that access codes to the CEC’s computer network were seized the day before the Nov. 21 vote “by unknown forces” and that “more than a million ballots were stuffed” after the polls had closed. His emotional testimony – televised nationwide – was crucial in convincing Ukraine’s highest court that electoral falsifications had indeed taken place.
Today, Knyazevych, who left the civil service for a career in politics, stands by every word he said. He was elected to parliament on the Our Ukraine ticket in 2006 and 2007, after Yushchenko personally asked him to join the pro-presidential political force.
“No major case from those elections has been tried in court,” Knyazevych said, adding that he doesn’t think they will ever be resolved. However, Knyazevych does not regret his actions, even though a high-ranking Regions politician threatened “to asphalt him into the ground.”
“Not speaking up would have been a crime against Ukraine and against the country,” said Knyazevych. “Perhaps we are not yet mature enough. We haven’t stood up on our feet as a state.”
