Ukraine's General Prosecutor's Office charged Mykola Melnychenko, former bodyguard of ex-President Leonid Kuchma, with disclosing state secrets, document forgery and abuse of power, bringing his more than a decade-old case to a new level and causing plenty of speculation about what will come next.
Melnychenko
returned to Ukraine on Oct. 24. Just six weeks ahead of the Oct. 28 parliamentary
vote, Melnychenko claimed that he has recordings to prove that Ukraine’s former
Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko were
involved in commissioning and paying for the 1996 murder of Yevhen Shcherban,
an influential Donetsk businessman and politician. Lazarenko is now in prison
in America after being convicted of money-laundering in U.S. federal court.
He is about
to be released on Nov.1. Tymoshenko is in prison in Kharkiv after being convicted of abuse of office
when she was prime minister.
Both Tymoshenko and Lazarenko have repeatedly denied
the allegation.
The Security
Service of Ukraine launched an investigation against Melnychenko last year on
the same charges as the prosecutor’s office is now investigating separately.
The press service of the General Prosecutor’s Office could not immediately
explain why prosecutors decided to duplicate the SBU’s investigation and
promised to respond to a formal written information request.
But
Melnychenko’s claim of possessing crucial evidence against Tymoshenko comes in
the midst of what looks like an increased effort on behalf of Renat Kuzmin,
first deputy general prosecutor, to push the case. Over the last several months
he has repeatedly talked about charging Tymoshenko for murder, said he had
evidence for it, and even asked the U.S. authorities to help him with his
investigation by allowing to question Lazarenko in the U.S. jail.
Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna Party made a statement dismissing Melnychenko’s claims about the
murder, and claiming it was orchestrated from the Presidential Administration.
The party also claimed that earlier Melnychenko had proposed to Tymoshenko that
he would testify in her favor for a fee.
“But he was
refused and started to cooperate with the regime, which intimidated or bought
the so-called ‘witnesses,” a technique that has become common-practice for
cracking down on opposition leaders,” the party’s statement on Melnychenko
read. In response, Melnychenko filed a lawsuit against the party, dismissing the claims as untrue.
Melnychenko’s
lawyer did not respond to phone calls.
Viktor
Nebozhenko, a political analyst, told Kometari news website he has no doubts
that Melnychenko “will be used [by the current authorities] against Tymoshenko”
ahead of the Oct. 28 parliamentary election.
Batkivshchyna,
one of the most popular opposition parties, according to various polls, ranks
second or third by popularity and will surely be represented in the next
parliament.
Another political
analyst Volodymyr Fesenko believes that “Melnychenko could have probably gotten
some guarantees [of his safety] from the General Prosecutor’s Office” in order
to come to Ukraine and be detained.
Both
analysts suspect that Melnychenko might also be used against Kuchma, whose
voice appears to be on the former bodyguard’s tapes allegedly discussing
getting rid of the Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze who was killed in
September 2000. The recording stirred huge anti-Kuchma protests in 2000-2001.
Kuchma
repeatedly denied he has anything to do with the disappearance and murder of
the journalist, calling the tape fake. The tapes have never been recognized as
authentic by the authorities, but it could happen now if they are used against Tymoshenko
in the murder case.
Melnychenko
was arrested and questioned by Ukrainian law enforcement when on Oct. 24 he
flew into Ukraine from the U.S. where he fled last year fearing for his life
and violating his travel ban during an ongoing investigation.
Deputy
Prosecutor Kuzmin told Kommersant-Ukraina newspaper that Melnychenko agreed to
talk to investigators, but would not
elaborate on the details. The prosecutor also promised to organize a press
conference on the matter.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]
