The Prosecutor General’s Office has softened the charges against five suspects in the case into the murder of whistleblower Kateryna Gandziuk after they gave new testimony, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, said on April 24.
Gandziuk, a municipal official in the city of Kherson, died in a hospital on Nov. 4 from injuries suffered in an acid attack on July 31.
The suspects pled guilty and testified about their participation in the crime and the participation of other suspects, Lysenko said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office changed the charges against the suspects from murder, which is punishable by between 10 years and life, to causing serious injuries that led to the victim’s death, which is punishable to between seven and 10 years in prison.
The five suspects are Serhiy Torbin, Mykyta Grabchuk, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, Vyacheslav Vyshnvesky and Viktor Gorbunov. They are former war veterans from nationalist Dmytro Yarosh’s Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of the Right Sector ultra-nationalist group.
Oleksiy Levin (Moskalenko), Vladyslav Manger, the speaker of Kherson Oblast’s legislature and a former member of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, and Igor Pavlovsky – an aide to Mykola Palamarchuk, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc – have been charged with ordering Gandziuk’s murder. They deny the charges.
Gandziuk’s father Viktor, and the “Who Killed Katya Gandziuk?” group on Facebook, have said that ex-Kherson Oblast Governor Andriy Gordeyev and his ex-deputy Yevhen Ryshchuk were implicated in the murder. Both have denied the accusations.
Ryshchuk told his alleged accomplice Levin (Moskalenko) to “punish” Gandziuk – for example, throw feces at her – and said that he was ready to pay for it, Moskalenko said in a video released by the Slidstvo.info investigative show.
Meanwhile, Gordeyev tried to influence the investigation into the murder of Gandziuk, Slidstvo.info reported.
Ryshchuk and Gordeyev deny the accusations.
