KYIV, Feb. 8 – A Ukrainian parliamentary official said that a famous U.S. expert has proved the authenticity of audio tapes that sparked a political scandal last year against Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma, a news report said Friday.
Oleksandr Zhyr, a lawmaker investigating the killing of opposition journalist Georgy Gongadze, told Radio Liberty that the tapes with recordings of Kuchma’s alleged orders to silence Gongadze were authentic, the Interfax news agency said. The tapes were released late in 2000 by Kuchma’s former bodyguard Mykola Melnichenko.
Gongadze, an outspoken critic of alleged high-level corruption who edited an Internet newsletter, disappeared in September 2000. A beheaded body found later in the woods near Kiev was proved to be his and his death sparked a political scandal. Kuchma vehemently denied involvement in the killing, which prompted months of opposition protests.
Zhyr said that Bruce Koenig, a respected U.S. expert and a former supervisory agent of the FBI laboratory’s audio-video division, proved the tapes’ authenticity. Zhyr spoke to Radio Liberty Thursday from the United States, where he received the expert’s results.
Ukrainian prosecutors have failed to bring the Gongadze probe to a clear end, and none of the previous domestic and foreign experts have been able to definitely prove the tapes’ authenticity. Parliament members organized their own investigation, which still continues.
