Viktor Gandziuk, the father of murdered whistleblower Kateryna Gandziuk, has accused three top officials in Kherson Oblast of covering up for the murderers of his daughter.
Gandziuk’s claim was cited in a Jan. 28 post in the Facebook group “Who Ordered the Murder of Katya Gandziuk.” The group is run by the friends of the murdered whistleblower.
Kateryna Gandziuk died in a hospital on Nov. 4. She had undergone numerous operations following an acid attack on her in Kherson on July 31.
Viktor Gandziuk said Oleksiy Moskalenko, an alleged mafia boss who was charged with organizing his daughter’s murder and placed on the wanted list on Jan. 21, was linked to the leadership of Kherson Oblast.
“When the murder suspect, a mafia boss who has just left jail, is cooperating with Vladyslav Manger, the speaker of Kherson Oblast’s legislature from the Batkivshchyna party, when the mafia boss is closely cooperating with Andriy Gordeyev, the governor of Kherson Oblast from the Poroshenko Bloc, when the mafia boss is closely cooperating with Gordeyev’s deputy Yevhen Ryshchuk, these people must disappear from the political scene,” Gandziuk said. “They have been compromised forever.”
Manger, Gordeyev and Ryshchuk have denied accusations of being involved in the murder.
Moskalenko, also known as Levin and Moskal, used to be an aide to Mykola Stavytsky, who was in turn an aide to Manger. Moskalenko has also claimed on his Facebook to be an aide to Manger himself.
“For me, Kateryna’s father, there’s no difference between the organizers and those who have covered up for them all this time,” Viktor Gandziuk said. “For me, Batkivshchyna is the party of the murderers of my daughter, and the Poroshenko Bloc is the party of the murderers of my daughter.”
Kateryna Gandziuk had accused Manger and Gordeyev of being behind an illegal logging scheme, which they deny.
Another suspected organizer of the murder, Igor Pavlovsky – an aide to Mykola Palamarchuk, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc – was charged as an organizer of the murder in November. Pavlovsky denied accusations of wrongdoing.
Lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem, a member of the parliamentary commission investigating Gandziuk’s murder, said in December that Moskalenko had frequented Pavlovsky’s office.
Police have arrested five suspected perpetrators of the murder, all former war veterans from nationalist Dmytro Yarosh’s Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of the Right Sector group. All the five suspects have admitted their involvement in the attack.
“(Prosecutor General Yuriy) Lutsenko knows who commissioned (Gandziuk’s murder),” Viktor Gandziuk said. “The Security Service of Ukraine also knows them. I’m sure the Interior Ministry has also known who it was from the beginning, and has been silent about them.”
The police’s reluctance to investigate the murder led to speculation that Interior Ministry and police officials and their allies could also be linked to the attack. Interior Ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko denied the accusations.
Under public pressure, Lutsenko transferred the case from the police to the Security Service of Ukraine in August. He said that the attack had been ordered by “law enforcement and state officials, with the help of separatist organizations.”
Local police officers were among the main targets of Gandziuk’s criticism. One of the suspects, Serhiy Torbin, is a former police officer.
In 2017, Gandziuk alleged that Artem Antoshchuk, who then headed the police department for economic crimes in Kherson Oblast, had demanded a kickback of 3 percent of the city budget from the municipal authorities. Antoshchuk denied the accusations.
Gandziuk had also been critical of Kirill Stremousov, a pro-Russian top official of the Socialist Party, led by Ilya Kiva.
Kiva is a former police official and aide to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and is the current head of the Interior Ministry’s labor union. Stremousov denied being involved in the attack on Gandziuk, while Kiva first lashed out at the activist, accusing her of corruption, and then denied his party had been involved in the attack.
