Case against former Ukrainian president a riddle

By Stefan Korshak Mar 24, 2011, 16:58 GMT

Kiev - More than 10 years after the crime, a former Ukrainian president has been charged in connection with his possible complicity in the murder of an opposition journalist.

No one, least of all Leonid Kuchma himself, seems to know exactly why.

'I am completely innocent and the charges against me are unfounded,' Kuchma told reporters on Thursday, the second day of his questioning by prosecutors in the September 2000 killing of independent journalist Georgy Gongadze.

'I can only guess as to why they are questioning me,' he said.

One theory is that authorities are putting on a big show about the rule of law in Ukraine, with no expectation that the prosecution will get very far.

Since coming to office in 2010, the government of President Viktor Yanukovych has launched a wide-ranging anti-corruption campaign. What's odd about the prosecution of Kuchma is his stature and the fact that he and Yanukovych were once allies.

Gongadze, an outspoken Kuchma critic in an era when the media were largely government-controlled, was murdered in a forest outside Kiev on September 17, 2000.

Three members of a four-man police hit squad were sentenced in 2005 as accessories to the killing. The leader, former police general Aleksy Pukach, is awaiting trial.

Pukach has claimed Kuchma's interior minister - who committed suicide in 2008 - placed a contract hit on Gongadze.

Others charge that Kuchma is the mastermind, pointing to the evidence of an audio tape, recorded by an ex-bodyguard, on which a voice resembling the former president's can be heard ordering Gongadze's murder.

Kuchma has called the recording a fabrication and denies any role in the murder.

'These allegations have been known for years, but it is one thing to point fingers based on a questionable recording, and it is another to make a solid criminal case,' Evhen Solodko, a criminal justice specialist for the Ukrainian Association of Lawyers, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'My view is the powers-that-be are sick of hearing complaints about the Gongadze case and poor rule of law in Ukraine, and they decided to allow Kuchma to be accused so the case against him will fall apart,' he said. 'It doesn't have a leg to stand on.'

Ukrainian legal and political observers are divided on why, more than a decade after evidence surfaced suggesting a link between Kuchma and Gongadze's death, prosecutors only now have gotten around to formally questioning.

'We can't exclude the possibility the government really is attempting to establish the rule of law, and it is undeniable that if a former president can be charged with a crime, that would be a very positive step,' Iryna Bekeshnina, director of the Ukrainian Democratic Initiatives Fund, told dpa.

'But who can say for sure?' she said.

One of the most popular theories points to the Yanukovych government's falling public support. Bringing a case against Kuchma is an excellent way to distract the public from a rotten economy, the argument goes.

Another theory is that an ambitous prosecutor is simply trying to boost his reputation, taking the government's anti-corruption drive as an excuse to revive the Gongadze case.

Those who view Ukrainian politics as a theatre of intrigue suspect a clever government plot to exonerate Kuchma. They doubt a court will uphold the charges, as the statute of limitations in the case ran out in August 2010.

'Kuchma isn't an opponent of the Yanukovych administration, he's more a victim of administration policy,' said Yury Yakimenko, senior political analyst for the Razumkov research group. 'But only the people pulling the strings know if this is a scheme to get him off or a more or less honest attempt to simulate justice.'

'But one thing is for sure,' Yakimenko added. 'Until the Yanukovych government starts prosecuting its own people, you can't talk about rule of law. That they haven't done.'