Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has announced on Dec. 4 that the authorities identified the organizer of the murder of civic activist Kateryna Gandziuk and said he is linked to a corruption scheme in Kherson.
Gandziuk, an anti-corruption campaigner and local council official who lived in Kherson, a city of 290,000 people some 550 kilometers south of Kyiv, was attacked with acid on July 31. She received serious burns to 40 percent of her body and died in hospital in Kyiv on Nov. 4.
Authorities have arrested a group of five perpetrators of the attack and one suspected intermediary, but the public has demanded to know the organizer who ordered the murder.
Lutsenko said the suspected organizer’s last name was Levin, and he had earlier been sentenced to 15 years in prison for organizing multiple murders. He was later released on parole, Lutsenko said.
Lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem said in a Facebook post on Dec. 4 that the suspect’s full name was Oleksiy Levin and that he is also an aide to a member of Kherson Oblast Council, Mykola Stavytsky.
The murder of Gandziuk, who was 33 when she died, shocked the country and caused protests by members of the public who have been demanding a proper investigation into her murder.
Ganziuk herself believed she was attacked because of her efforts to expose corruption.
There has been a series of attacks on activists in Ukraine in 2017-2018, many of them in the south parts of Ukraine. Gandziuk has now become the symbol of a protest movement against the lack of investigations into attacks on activists.
According to Lutsenko, his office has identified all of the suspects in the Gandziuk murder case, including those who ordered, organized and executed the crime.
The prosecutor general said that his office had also established the motive for the murder.
“It was the activity of Gandziuk against one of the major corruption schemes of the local authorities,” Lutsenko said in his interview with ICTV on Dec. 3.
He said prosecutors would soon serve notices of suspicion to all the suspects, although he didn’t specify exactly when, and neither did he name the suspects.
Gandziuk exposed many corruption schemes in Kherson, and was often in conflict with local law enforcement and authorities.
Gandziuk’s friend and lawyer, Masi Nayyem, said he was not sure which corruption scheme was involved, however, he believes that Gandziuk’s murder was ordered by the local authorities and carried out by the local law enforcement.
Lutsenko said the new suspect, Levin, was the main suspect.
“According to the investigation, he (Levin) was the key figure in this crime,” Lutsenko said during his briefing in Odesa, a city in southern Ukraine.
Lawmaker Nayyem, who is a brother to Gandziuk’s lawyer and also a member of the temporary investigation commission parliament formed after the death of Gandziuk, also said that Stavytsky was “close to the head of Kherson Oblast Council Vladyslav Manger.”
Nayyem claimed that Manger visited the office of another suspect in the case, Ihor Pavlovsky, multiple times.
Stavytsky did not immediately respond to the request for a comment.
Gandziuk had exposed a corrupt scheme allegedly involving Manger around a month before she was attacked.
In early July, the activist exposed the illegal felling of timber in a forest in Oleshky district, located not far from Kherson. Gandziuk said the forest was set on fire to hide the illegal logging. She alleged that Manger and Kherson Governor Andrii Gordieiev were behind the crime.
Manger earlier denied these accusations. The Kyiv Post couldn’t immediately reach Gorgieiev for comment.
Investigation
After the acid attack on Gandziuk, the police arrested a suspect, Mykola Novikov, who was quickly released as he had an alibi.
The police then arrested a group of five suspected perpetrators of the attack – Serhiy Torbin, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, Viktor Gorbunov, Viacheslav Vyshnevskyi and Mykyta Hrabchuk – who are still under arrest. All are former fighters of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of the nationalist Right Sector group.
Four have admitted participating in the attack, and said Torbin was the organizer.
Torbin, a former officer of Kherson police, denies the accusations.
Kherson police originally classified the attack as hooliganism, but after a public outcry they changed it to “intentional injury with the purpose of intimidation” and later to “assassination attempt.” After Gandziuk died on Nov. 4, the police reclassified the case into a contract killing.
Friends of Gandziuk who established a group on Facebook in which they inform the public about updates in the case, said in a post published on Nov. 5 that they knew, as did Gandziuk, who ordered the activist’s murder and the motive for the attack.
They claimed that Pavlovsky, an aide to Petro Poroshenko Bloc party lawmaker Mykola Palamarchuk, was the one who conveyed the payment from those who ordered the attack to those who carried it out.
They also claimed that Pavlovsky paid Torbin, the head of the group that executed the attack.
Pavlovsky denied the accusations in an interview with Ukrainian television’s 112 Channel. He also said he hadn’t known Gandziuk, but confirmed he knew Torbin. Pavlovsky also admitted to 112 that he had been questioned by the police and was a witness in the investigation into the attack on Gandziuk.
The friends of the activist also claimed that Palamarchuk was the “enforcer” of the Interior Ministry in Kherson Oblast.
Palamarchuk, who is a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko’s party and also a retired police general, claimed in a press release shared by his party faction that he has nothing to do with the Gandziuk case. Later Palamarchuk said that he had fired Pavlovsky.
Soon after the Nov. 5 Facebook post was made, Lutsenko slammed the activists for leaking information about the investigation. Pavlovsky was later declared to be suspected of co-organizing the attack on Gandziuk.
Pavlovsky was detained without the right to bail on Nov. 10.
