Procurator General's Office charges Lazarenko with ordering assassinations (02/17/02)

Procurator General's Office charges Lazarenko with ordering assassinations

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The Procurator General's Office of Ukraine announced on February 7 that it had solved two high-profile murders of Ukrainian political figures and officially charged ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko with ordering the assassinations.

Within hours after the charges were announced, the Verkhovna Rada voted unanimously to withdraw Mr. Lazarenko's mandate as a national deputy to the Parliament, which canceled his immunity from criminal prosecution.

Deputy Procurator General Mykola Obikhod told journalists that Mr. Lazarenko, who currently awaits trial in the United States on money laundering charges, had paid a gang of professional killers to murder National Deputy Yevhen Scherban of Donetsk in 1996 and National Deputy Vadym Hetman, former chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, in 1998.

"We have arrested not only various members of the group, but those directly responsible for carrying out the orders, the killers of Vadym Hetman and Yevhen Scherban, those who pulled the trigger," said Mr. Obikhod.

Ukraine's law enforcement agencies, including the Procurator General's Office, had been hounded by the press and confounded by its inability to solve any of the several high-profile killings of political figures and journalists that have occurred in Ukraine in the last few years, of which the murders of Mr. Scherban and Mr. Hetman were among the most prominent.

Mr. Obikhod explained that the break in both cases came while the country's chief law enforcement agency was investigating the activities of a criminal gang led by Yevhen Kushnir, a now deceased Donetsk resident who had taken Israeli citizenship. The Procurator General's Office determined that Mr. Lazarenko had paid $2 million "from personal accounts under his control" for the hit on Mr. Scherban and $850,000 for Mr. Hetman's murder.

The investigation had concluded that Mr. Lazarenko had paid to have Mr. Scherban killed to get access to business opportunities in the Donetsk region the national deputy either controlled or influenced. Many here believe that Mr. Scherban had ordered the failed assassination attempt against Mr. Lazarenko earlier in 1996.

Mr. Hetman was murdered "to clear obstacles to resolving issues in the financial sector of Ukraine," explained Mr. Obikhod, referring to Mr. Hetman's work as chairman of the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange and his huge influence in Ukraine's banking sector.

The investigation has implicated Mr. Kushnir's organization in a total of 26 murders for hire. Eight individuals are currently under arrest and awaiting trial, while several others are dead or remain at large. Mr. Obikhod said that 15 members of the Kushnir gang planned or took part in the slaying of Mr. Scherban, who was gunned down along with his wife by men in police uniforms as he disembarked from a plane at Donetsk Airport. A son who hid under the limousine that was awaiting them on the tarmac survived.

Mr. Hetman was fatally shot as he entered his apartment building in Kyiv in a murder planned by seven members of the gang.

On February 5 officials turned over the materials of the completed investigation to the Kyiv District Appellate Court, which will consider all 26 murder charges. Because Mr. Lazarenko will not stand trial in Ukraine until his return from the United States is arranged, the materials regarding Mr. Lazarenko will be separated out.

Mr. Obikhod said the Kushnir criminal organization, which consisted of some 25 people and was most active in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, had an arsenal of firepower at its disposal that included high-powered rifles, automatic weapons, high-caliber machine guns, grenades and various types of explosives, much of it from Chechnya, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He said that law enforcement officials also found Ukrainian state militia uniforms, bulletproof vests, powerful scopes and night vision during their investigation of the Kushnir gang.

Mr. Obikhod said that two other prominent Ukrainian businessmen/oligarchs - National Deputy Oleksander Volkov, one of President Leonid Kuchma's closest confidantes, and Ihor Bakai, ex-chairman of the Naftohaz Ukrainy - had been targeted for assassination before the group's activities were curtailed by the death of its leader and the beginning of the criminal investigation.

Mr. Lazarenko, who formed and headed the Batkivschyna Party and became a prime critic of President Kuchma after the head of state sacked him as prime minister, has been the subject of a string of criminal charges in the last three years. He was arrested in December 1998 at the French-Swiss border while trying to enter Switzerland with an illegal Panamanian passport. He was subsequently convicted in absentia by a Swiss court on money laundering charges and given a suspended sentence.

Mr. Lazarenko, once considered the richest man in Ukraine, has been in a detention facility outside the city of San Francisco since February 24, 1999, after being detained when he attempted to enter the country with an illegal passport, after which he requested political asylum.

That request was rejected by U.S. authorities, who then arrested the Ukrainian politician while they investigated money laundering allegations. Those charges were eventually formally handed down and he now awaits trial.

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