ANALYSIS: 'Kuchmagate' saga continues (10/06/02)

ANALYSIS

'Kuchmagate' saga continues

by Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

Last week's decision by Washington to block nearly $55 million in previously approved aid to Kyiv over suspicions that Ukraine may have illegally sold Iraq Kolchuha radar systems capable of helping bring down U.S. aircraft has once again placed the so-called "Kuchmagate" scandal in the international spotlight.

The U.S. Department of Justice authenticated a section of Mykola Melnychenko's tape recordings in which President Leonid Kuchma appears to have authorized the sale of four Kolchuha radar systems to Iraq. Since allegations of the illegal sale have become a very serious problem in current U.S.-Ukrainian relations, it appears advisable to recapitulate the main stages of the prolonged Kuchmagate case to readers of "RFE/RL's Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report."

In November 2000, Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz first unveiled to the Verkhovna Rada a portion of tapes made in President Kuchma's office by one of his security guards, Mr. Melnychenko. This portion of the tapes revealed a conversation between Mr. Kuchma; Volodymyr Lytvyn, then head of the presidential administration (and currently Parliament chairman), and Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Kravchenko about opposition journalist Heorhii Gongadze, the editor-in-chief of the Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda.

The first reaction of the authorities was to deny the authenticity of the tapes themselves and even the existence of Maj. Melnychenko, who had by then had fled Ukraine for Prague. The authorities also consistently denied it was possible to bug the president's office and ridiculed the suggestion that a digital tape recorder was placed under his couch.

It was not until a video interview of Mr. Melnychenko was broadcast in Parliament that it was confirmed that he was a member of the Security Service unit responsible for protecting high-ranking officials, such as Mr. Kuchma. The illegal search by customs officers of the opposition deputies who brought back the videotape also was suspicious. What did the authorities have to hide if the tapes were not authentic?

Slowly, the official view changed from total denial of the authenticity of the tapes. One reason was that opposition deputies began to acknowledge their voices on the tapes. Eventually, Mr. Kuchma himself accepted that his voice was to be found on the tapes but claimed that Mr. Melnychenko had spliced different portions of the tapes to incriminate him. This had remained the official version concerning the tapes until recently.

Calls by opposition deputies to interview Mr. Melnychenko and to use the tapes as part of an investigation into the criminal deeds discussed on them were always refused by former Procurator General Mykhailo Potebenko. This in itself was suspicious. Mr. Melnychenko offered to take a lie-detector test to prove the tapes were genuine. Instead of dealing with the tapes and the issues they raised, the authorities swept the whole issue under the rug, hoping it would go away.

Time, however, was working against them. One of the first reasons for doubting the sincerity of the authorities was the fiasco surrounding FBI experts invited to Ukraine in April of this year to investigate the Gongadze murder. The FBI agents went home empty-handed, as they were denied access to evidence.

Most of the Ukrainian elites accept that the tapes are genuine. Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko claims he never doubted their authenticity from the time they were first offered to him on November 11, 2000. Nevertheless, the Communists think along similar lines as do the oligarchs and Mr. Kuchma: that the taping was part of a U.S.-backed plot.

The Ukrainian position on the tapes did not budge when BEK TEK, a specialists firm that provides authentication services to the FBI and the U.S. Supreme Court, began to authenticate sections of the tapes provided by Mr. Melnychenko. BEK TEK confirmed that no sections had been spliced together, as President Kuchma claimed. BEK TEK's authentication was insufficient for the Ukrainian authorities, as it was undertaken by a private company. In a similar manner, a test of the tapes made by the Vienna Press Institute early on in the Kuchmagate crisis also was ignored.

Over the course of this year, Ukrainian authorities have been forced gradually to change their attitude toward the tapes. In August, the newly appointed procurator general, Sviatoslav Piskun, ordered a test abroad of the tape dealing with Mr. Gongadze. This was coupled with new autopsies of Mr. Gongadze's decapitated body and an admission that his murder was political - something the authorities had always denied.

Ukraine's authorities have been mainly forced to change their attitudes toward the tapes mainly through international pressure. For example, they have continued to deny that Kolchuha radar systems were ever dispatched to Iraq in contravention of the United Nations arms embargo. After the United States undertook its own official tests and officially announced their results on September 24, Ukrainian authorities could no longer deny that the portion of the tapes where Kuchma is heard authorizing the sale is not genuine. Whether the Kolchuhas are in Iraq is still to be determined. Nevertheless, all sides now agree that Mr. Kuchma authorized their sale.

Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Anatolii Zlenko has now admitted that the president's office could have been bugged after all. What will Ukraine's next retreat be?

The United States has admitted that its authentication of the tape dealing with Iraq will color its views of other portions of the tapes, e.g., one portion relates to Mr. Kuchma apparently lying to the United States about former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko. Mr. Melnychenko is to be a witness in the Lazarenko trial, and the United States therefore, will, be conducting further official tests of other portions. Will Ukraine backtrack each time an official result is announced by the United States?

Since the Kuchmagate crisis began in November 2000, the authorities have not been honest or forthright regarding the tapes and have refused to investigate the serious allegations arising from them. Only international pressure has forced them to shift begrudgingly from total denial to selective denial (the tapes are genuine but spliced together) and now acceptance that some of them have not been tampered with.

Instead of dealing with the issues raised on the taped conversations, the authorities' gut reaction was to initiate legal action against Melnychenko and to accuse him of "treason" and "espionage." The tapes allegedly include state secrets, which Melnychenko accepts, but the Ukrainian authorities argue that none of them should be released. Mr. Melnychenko and the authorities disagree over the definition of "state secrets." Mr. Melnychenko sticks to the traditional definition of "state secrets," which deals with foreign countries (issues pertaining to Russia, Britain, Germany, Israel, Spain and Turkey are on the tapes), while Ukrainian authorities have a broader definition that includes all of the activities undertaken by President Kuchma that were taped, including corrupt ones.

The sharp reaction of the authorities to the tape scandal reflects their incredulity that they could be caught red-handed. The lack of transparency in the executive, the sense of infallibility and belief that the authorities would never be caught, and the unclear dividing line between the authorities and the state all were severely damaged by the tapes. Thus, the authorities are demonstrating an unwillingness to come clean and initiate an impartial investigation.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies and adjunct staffer at the department of political science, University of Toronto.

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