Enough evidence of Kuchma's involvement in Gongadze killing - Prosecutor General's Office
KYIV. Feb 20 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has enough evidence demonstrating the involvement of Ukraine's former President Leonid Kuchma (who was president of Ukraine in 1994-2005) in the killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze, Ukraine's First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said.
"We have enough evidence confirming Kuchma's involvement in this crime. We are now investigating and collecting evidence," he told Ekho Moskvy radio on Wednesday responding to a question as to whether the investigators will be able to prove that Kuchma ordered that killing.
Journalist Gongadze disappeared on September 16, 2000. Forensic experts said a headless corpse found in a forest near Kyiv in November that year might be Gongadze's body and that cranium fragments found in the Kyiv region in 2009 were definitely parts of his skull.
However, the body remains unburied as Gongadze's mother refuses to recognize it as her son's remains.
Tapes of Kuchma's bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko were released in parliament in November 2000, sparking a scandal.
The Security Service finished investigating the recordings late last month, seeking the ex-bodyguard's indictment under the betrayal of an official secrets law. However, the Prosecutor General's Office launched a new investigation.
Kuchma was charged by the Prosecutor General's Office on March 21, 2011, of exceeding powers that led to Gongadze's murder, but the Pechersky Court repealed the charge on December 13 of that year, refusing to accept Melnychenko's tapes as evidence.
Kuchma denies his complicity in Gongadze's murder.
On January 29, 2013, the Kyiv Pechersky Court found Alexei Pukach, former head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's exterior surveillance department, guilty of killing journalist Georgy Gongadze and sentenced him to life in prison. Pukach was striped of his rank as lieutenant-general and was ordered to pay 500,000 hryvni to Gongadze's widow and 100,000 hryvni to journalist Alexei Podolsky.