NEWS ANALYSIS: Odesa police get their man - but that's about all ... (04/18/99)

NEWS ANALYSIS

Odesa police get their man - but that's about all ...

by Stefan Korshak

KYIV - A man from Moldova's separatist Transdniester region has been convicted of murdering the editor of an Odesa newspaper, but after a year and a half of looking, law enforcers have made little progress toward arresting the man who ordered the hit.

The Odesa Regional Court convicted Aleksander Glek, 42, on March 19. He had been accused of shooting Borys Derevianko, editor of Vechernaya Odesa newspaper, twice in the back on August 11, 1997. Twenty-four hours after the murder, police had already circulated a composite drawing of a man whom eyewitnesses had seen running down the tree-lined esplanade where the attack took place. On August 13, 1997, Ukrainian border police took two men into custody as they attempted to board an Illichivsk ferry to Varna, Bulgaria. Both were Moldovan citizens. Reportedly, one resembled the man in the composite drawing, an Odesa media source told the Post. Both were also suspected members of an organized-crime group and had solid alibis, police and media sources confirmed.

But under intense questioning that lasted over a week, the pair identified a fellow Moldovan to Odesa police: Aleksander Glek. According to a Kievskie Vedemosti newspaper report, police beat their informant; a police source denied the allegation.

Details on Mr. Glek emerged. The former Odesa State University geography professor had taken up residence in the town of Slobodzeia in the Transdniester region of Moldova. He had done well after the break-up of the Soviet Union, though police were unable to establish exactly by what means.

According to media reports, Mr. Glek had cashed in on Ukraine's burgeoning smuggling industry; his choice of country was, to say the least, convenient for that kind of business. A breakaway province with a Soviet-style government, in recent years the region has served as a tax-free haven for organized-crime groups operating on the Black Sea's north shore and importing goods into Ukraine. Odesa Regional Police Chief Grigory Epur was not phased by the fact that his suspect was not only out of his jurisdiction, but in another country entirely.

On September 1 at 4 a.m., Chief Epur led a six-man SWAT team to Slobodzeia. That part of the mission was relatively easy; for Ukrainian citizens transit of the border between the Transdniester region and Ukraine proper requires only a routine passport check.

Neither the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Republic of Moldova diplomats appear to have been aware of Chief Epur's decision to extend the long arm of Ukrainian law to the village of Slobodzeia. Chief Epur did, however, conduct "negotiations over jurisdiction with local police," Kievskiye Viedemosti reported. Slobedzeia's finest yielded the field of action to their Odesa colleagues, and at 8 a.m. the Odesa cops attempted to arrest Mr. Glek.

The initial detention effort failed when an officer was unable to identify Mr. Glek as he exited his apartment and walked past the policeman. Local inhabitants subsequently provided a better description of Mr. Glek to the Odesa law enforcers, who made their collar that same evening when Glek returned home to collect his personal effects and cash. After a short chase, an Odesa police tracking dog located Mr. Glek in a clutch of bushes. Odesa police transported Mr. Glek to an Odesa holding facility, effectively extraditing him across an international border, without interference from Moldovan or Transdniester authorities.

"We have good relations with our Transdniester colleagues," Chief Epur later explained to ART television.

A joint Odesa and Transdniester police search of Mr. Glek's apartment reportedly turned up an unregistered pistol and evidence of other murder contracts given Mr. Glek by local businessmen, the newspaper Kievskiye Viedomosti reported on January 21.

Further investigation on both sides of the border led Odesa prosecutors to suspect that Mr. Glek had received between $3,000 and $10,000 to kill Mr. Derevianko. On September 8, 1997, Odesa police reportedly intercepted a package containing two pistols that was sent to Mr. Glek in jail, Kievskiye Viedomosti later wrote. An independent Odesa media source confirmed the account, though neither could explain why anyone would send a murder suspect weapons while he was in police detention.

One of the pistols, a 5.45 mm weapon with a homemade silencer, was the weapon used to kill Mr. Derevianko, government prosecutors later argued. Certainly, sending a murder weapon to a man in jail on suspicion of gunning down a newspaper editor was odd. One possible explanation would be that, in Ukraine's violent and often uncontrolled detention system, a prisoner of the state could well use firearms as barter items or for self-defense.

Ukrainian media, led by Kievskiye Viedomosti, argued Odesa police officers conspired to plant the pistol on Mr. Glek in order to give government prosecutors an open-and-shut case. Odesa Regional Police spokesman Yaroslav Koitniuk vehemently denies the allegation. "We did our job in very difficult conditions," he said in a recent interview. "Everything [in connection with the case's evidence] was in order."

The Glek case nevertheless has remained open for 18 months. Detectives working on both sides of the border turned up several persons, also named in local media, who could have paid Mr. Glek to carry out the hit. Police believe Aleksander Balashov, the head of the Odesa City Sports Association, to be a prime suspect. He apparently is in hiding abroad, a police source said.

Odesa police repeatedly have declined comment on how many other leads they are currently following up. Odesa media sources told the Post other possible suspects are a Moldovan businessman, Chechen mafia, Odesa mafia, associates of former Mayor Eduard Hurvits and Russian energy-industry insiders, among others.

"In the end, Borys Fedorovych [Derevianko] had many enemies, and we only know the man who pulled the trigger," said Larysa Burcho, Vechernaya Odesa editor-in- chief. Mr. Burcho said a police investigation of Vechernaya Odesa archives identified 52 persons or groups who could have been irritated by Mr. Derevianko during his 25-year career at the paper. "The police have not followed up one of those possibilities," she said. "No one has ever been found ... and to me it does not seem like the police are looking too hard."

Mr. Glek has maintained his innocence throughout. Writing for a three-member panel decision, Odesa Regional Judge Yurii Poherelyi concluded that Mr. Glek's testimony was false and ordered him executed by firing squad.

According to Ukrainian law, Mr. Glek's lawyers had until March 26 to appeal the decision. To date, no appeal has been made. However, a higher court - in this case, most likely the Supreme Court of Ukraine - could accept a later appeal if lawyers could justify missing the one-week deadline, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Legal Foundation said. Legal observers believe that, given Ukraine's moratorium on the death penalty put into effect in the beginning of 1998, Mr. Glek's sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

The police investigation into who ordered the hit on Mr. Derevianko continues, Mr. Koitniuk said. But his former colleagues are not holding out too much hope. "The police could have and could be doing a great deal more," Ms. Burcho said. "But they aren't, and I don't expect them to."

Meanwhile, observers from the legal and media industries said most of Ukraine's contract killings are ordered by the mafia or one of the country's political clans; both are too powerful for regional law enforcers to investigate effectively.

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