New top prosecutor focuses on Gongadze case

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Sviatoslav Piskun, Ukraine's new procurator general, put the spotlight back on the unsolved investigation of the murder of journalist Heorhii Gongadze on July 12 when as one of his first official acts in office he announced the formation of a special task force to solve the crime.

The group, to consist of leading criminal and forensic experts, will review all information that has been gathered thus far and continue forward from there, explained a statement issued by the agency.

The law enforcement agency said the inquiry would be "intensive, persistent and objective, and would utilize all available resources of Ukraine's law enforcement system and the country's citizens." The office said that it would allow other domestic and foreign experts to contribute to the work of the task force, and the relatives of the missing journalist and other citizens, too.

The announcement came a day after Ukraine's Parliament formed a new ad hoc investigative committee to independently further delve into the Gongadze case, as well as to look at two other criminal matters: the murder in Donetsk last year of Ihor Aleksandrov, another journalist, and an attempt on the life of a controversial oppositionist lawmaker, Oleksander Eliashkevych. National Deputy Hryhorii Omelchenko for the Yulia Tymoshenko faction, will chair the parliamentary committee, which will include no representatives from the pro-presidential factions in the Verkhovna Rada.

The case of Mr. Gongadze had received much less public attention in past months as the lack of new evidence, parliamentary elections and the resignation of Mr. Piskun's controversial predecessor, Mykhailo Potebenko, drove the affair out of the spotlight. Mr. Potebenko resigned in mid-April so that he could take the seat he won in Parliament.

However, the mother of the journalist, Lesia, has maintained that the Procurator General's Office must continue to work to solve the crime. The United States and the European Union also have kept the pressure on the Ukrainian government by repeatedly emphasizing in diplomatic statements that Ukraine's entry into European political and economic structures will depend on how the Gongadze case finally ends.

Mr. Gongadze, a journalist who had founded Ukrainska Pravda, one of Ukraine's first Internet newspapers, and who was a staunch critic of President Leonid Kuchma, disappeared on September 16, 2000. A decapitated body believed to belong to the missing journalist was discovered nearly two months later a short distance from Kyiv. Soon afterwards opposition forces in Parliament revealed they had in their possession audio recordings implicating the Ukrainian president and close confidantes in the disappearance.

Since then there have been contradictory DNA test results and inconclusive findings in analyses to determine the authenticity of the digital recordings. Mr. Piskun's predecessor, Mr. Potebenko, was a controversial element in the investigation. Many critics have said he did everything in his power to derail the case. At one point he told lawmakers that in his estimation, a 99.6 percent probability that a DNA test showed the discovered body to belong to the missing journalist still left room for doubt.

President Kuchma nominated Mr. Piskun, 42, who had previously been the assistant director of the State Tax Administration, as the country's top prosecutor on June 29. The Verkhovna Rada approved the appointment on July 5.

President Kuchma, who was in Copenhagen for the Ukraine-European Union Summit when the Verkhovna Rada confirmed the new procurator general, told reporters there that he believes the new appointment would provide "fresh impetus" to complete the investigation, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

The next day in Kyiv, while introducing the new top law enforcement official, Mr. Kuchma criticized the way in which various high-profile criminal investigations had been treated by the Procurator General's Office in the past and said that Mr. Piskun had a responsibility to restore the agency's integrity.

"It must become a point of honor to bring to a logical conclusion the investigation of these controversial criminal cases. Those who violated the law must be made answerable regardless of whether they may have held important positions, or their past services," said President Kuchma.

Mr. Potebenko, one of those who observers believe should be held answerable, now enjoys immunity as a national deputy.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 21, 2002, No. 29, Vol. LXX

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