New York Times: New Tapes Appear With Threats by Ukraine's President
02/19/2001 | Broker
February 19, 2001
New Tapes Appear With Threats by Ukraine's President
By PATRICK E. TYLER
MOSCOW, Feb. 18 — A newly released secret recording of Ukraine's president, Leonid D. Kuchma, indicates that in the fall of 1999, he ordered his police and tax authorities to undertake a broad campaign of threats and intimidation to ensure that he would win election to a second term as president.
In conversations with his chief of intelligence and the head of Ukraine's tax administration, Mr. Kuchma is heard on the recording instructing them to threaten local officials all over the country with imprisonment and loss of employment if they failed to deliver the required number of votes for Mr. Kuchma to win by a "comfortable" margin.
"You have to sit down with every head and tell him that he will go to jail, or you have to provide votes — yes or no?" Mr. Kuchma is reported to have said. The recording also indicates that Ukraine's intelligence services maintain dossiers on local officials to be used as blackmail material to enforce discipline and loyalty to Mr. Kuchma.
The recording, part of hundreds of hours of conversations secretly recorded by a former officer in Mr. Kuchma's presidential security service, Mikola Melnichenko, was published during the weekend by the Ukrainska Pravda Internet news site and translated into English by The Kyiv Post, a weekly newspaper in the Ukrainian capital.
Recordings released this winter have already set off a political crisis in Ukraine, one of the largest post- Soviet republics. Mr. Kuchma's pro-reform coalition in Parliament has collapsed, a broad coalition of parties has united in calling for his resignation and Kiev's center is now a permanent camp for "Ukraine Without Kuchma" protesters.
The latest transcript raises still further questions about the legitimacy of Mr. Kuchma's government. The 1999 balloting was criticized at the time for having taken place in an atmosphere of harassment of independent news media and the improper and systematic efforts by public officials to influence the vote.
On Dec. 2, 1999, Steven Pifer, then the United States ambassador in Ukraine, said that while the campaign has exhibited a number of "unfortunate features," the results "represented a credible democratic process" and the balloting "reflected the will of the electorate."
As with earlier recordings, some authenticated by political figures whose voices were captured with Mr. Kuchma, the transcript reveals the Ukrainian president as a profane and autocratic leader eager to use all the powers of his police and security forces to punish critics, silence independent journalists and, in some cases, to use violence or the threat of imprisonment to eliminate his political enemies.
"It's necessary for a tax worker to go to every collective farm head in every village and say: `Dear friend, you understand clearly how much material we have on you so that you could find yourself in jail tomorrow,' " Mr. Kuchma reportedly said in conversations with the director of Ukraine's tax administration, Mikola Azarov, and his former intelligence chief, Leonid Derkach.
"And you should warn them," Mr. Kuchma continued, referring to those officials whose districts might fail to deliver votes, "after the elections they won't be working." He added, "We will not leave one of them, you understand, all the way down to the village."
Mr. Kuchma asserted that "there is probably more than enough material on every collective farm head" to back up the threat that local officials could find themselves imprisoned for failing to deliver the election results in their district. "We can't relax," Mr. Kuchma said, "We have to win with a comfortable advantage."
Mr. Kuchma won 36.49 percent of the vote against four leading contenders in the first round of balloting on Oct. 31, 1999. In a runoff with the Communist Party candidate Petro Simonenko on Nov. 14, Mr. Kuchma took 56.2 percent of the vote to Mr. Simonenko's 37.8 percent.
After the election, according to the recordings, Mr. Kuchma said he wanted "the toughest possible order" enforced against those who failed to deliver. Mr. Derkach, his intelligence chief then and until last weekend, when Mr. Kuchma unexpectedly fired him, promised to carry it out, suggesting that the prosecutor general's office be given additional powers to threaten local officials.
"Why should we lose power?" Mr. Derkach asked. Mr. Kuchma agreed: "If we are the power, then that is an instrument of our power — the prosecutor's office."
The full record of Mr. Melnichenko's recordings has been delivered by an investigating commission of the Ukrainian Parliament to the International Press Institute in Vienna for analysis. Mr. Kuchma's aides initially claimed that the recordings were false, but in January they acknowledged that it was the president's voice on the recordings, though they also assert that the tapes were edited to smear Mr. Kuchma.
Since he fled Ukraine with his recordings, Mr. Melnichenko has been hiding in Europe and is said to be seeking political asylum from Western governments. Ukraine, meanwhile, is seeking his return to face criminal charges for illegal bugging of the president's office. Mr. Melnichenko, in two interviews with the American-financed Radio Liberty, has said he made the recordings by placing a microphone under Mr. Kuchma's couch and decided to publicize the presidential conversations to expose corruption.
The first recordings released in November contained snatches of conversations in which Mr. Kuchma ordered his minister of interior, Yuri Kravchenko, to arrange the abduction of Georgi Gongadze, a journalist who disappeared last September and whose headless body was later found in a shallow grave outside of Kiev.
The United States and the European Union have criticized Mr. Kuchma's government for failing to press an investigation into Mr. Gongadze's murder. Mr. Gongadze, 31, founded the Ukrainska Pravda Internet news site, (www.pravda.com.ua), which has been publishing transcripts of the recordings made by Mr. Melnichenko. Since Mr. Gongadze's death, the Internet site has been operated by his colleagues on a grant arranged through the United States Embassy in Kiev.
New Tapes Appear With Threats by Ukraine's President
By PATRICK E. TYLER
MOSCOW, Feb. 18 — A newly released secret recording of Ukraine's president, Leonid D. Kuchma, indicates that in the fall of 1999, he ordered his police and tax authorities to undertake a broad campaign of threats and intimidation to ensure that he would win election to a second term as president.
In conversations with his chief of intelligence and the head of Ukraine's tax administration, Mr. Kuchma is heard on the recording instructing them to threaten local officials all over the country with imprisonment and loss of employment if they failed to deliver the required number of votes for Mr. Kuchma to win by a "comfortable" margin.
"You have to sit down with every head and tell him that he will go to jail, or you have to provide votes — yes or no?" Mr. Kuchma is reported to have said. The recording also indicates that Ukraine's intelligence services maintain dossiers on local officials to be used as blackmail material to enforce discipline and loyalty to Mr. Kuchma.
The recording, part of hundreds of hours of conversations secretly recorded by a former officer in Mr. Kuchma's presidential security service, Mikola Melnichenko, was published during the weekend by the Ukrainska Pravda Internet news site and translated into English by The Kyiv Post, a weekly newspaper in the Ukrainian capital.
Recordings released this winter have already set off a political crisis in Ukraine, one of the largest post- Soviet republics. Mr. Kuchma's pro-reform coalition in Parliament has collapsed, a broad coalition of parties has united in calling for his resignation and Kiev's center is now a permanent camp for "Ukraine Without Kuchma" protesters.
The latest transcript raises still further questions about the legitimacy of Mr. Kuchma's government. The 1999 balloting was criticized at the time for having taken place in an atmosphere of harassment of independent news media and the improper and systematic efforts by public officials to influence the vote.
On Dec. 2, 1999, Steven Pifer, then the United States ambassador in Ukraine, said that while the campaign has exhibited a number of "unfortunate features," the results "represented a credible democratic process" and the balloting "reflected the will of the electorate."
As with earlier recordings, some authenticated by political figures whose voices were captured with Mr. Kuchma, the transcript reveals the Ukrainian president as a profane and autocratic leader eager to use all the powers of his police and security forces to punish critics, silence independent journalists and, in some cases, to use violence or the threat of imprisonment to eliminate his political enemies.
"It's necessary for a tax worker to go to every collective farm head in every village and say: `Dear friend, you understand clearly how much material we have on you so that you could find yourself in jail tomorrow,' " Mr. Kuchma reportedly said in conversations with the director of Ukraine's tax administration, Mikola Azarov, and his former intelligence chief, Leonid Derkach.
"And you should warn them," Mr. Kuchma continued, referring to those officials whose districts might fail to deliver votes, "after the elections they won't be working." He added, "We will not leave one of them, you understand, all the way down to the village."
Mr. Kuchma asserted that "there is probably more than enough material on every collective farm head" to back up the threat that local officials could find themselves imprisoned for failing to deliver the election results in their district. "We can't relax," Mr. Kuchma said, "We have to win with a comfortable advantage."
Mr. Kuchma won 36.49 percent of the vote against four leading contenders in the first round of balloting on Oct. 31, 1999. In a runoff with the Communist Party candidate Petro Simonenko on Nov. 14, Mr. Kuchma took 56.2 percent of the vote to Mr. Simonenko's 37.8 percent.
After the election, according to the recordings, Mr. Kuchma said he wanted "the toughest possible order" enforced against those who failed to deliver. Mr. Derkach, his intelligence chief then and until last weekend, when Mr. Kuchma unexpectedly fired him, promised to carry it out, suggesting that the prosecutor general's office be given additional powers to threaten local officials.
"Why should we lose power?" Mr. Derkach asked. Mr. Kuchma agreed: "If we are the power, then that is an instrument of our power — the prosecutor's office."
The full record of Mr. Melnichenko's recordings has been delivered by an investigating commission of the Ukrainian Parliament to the International Press Institute in Vienna for analysis. Mr. Kuchma's aides initially claimed that the recordings were false, but in January they acknowledged that it was the president's voice on the recordings, though they also assert that the tapes were edited to smear Mr. Kuchma.
Since he fled Ukraine with his recordings, Mr. Melnichenko has been hiding in Europe and is said to be seeking political asylum from Western governments. Ukraine, meanwhile, is seeking his return to face criminal charges for illegal bugging of the president's office. Mr. Melnichenko, in two interviews with the American-financed Radio Liberty, has said he made the recordings by placing a microphone under Mr. Kuchma's couch and decided to publicize the presidential conversations to expose corruption.
The first recordings released in November contained snatches of conversations in which Mr. Kuchma ordered his minister of interior, Yuri Kravchenko, to arrange the abduction of Georgi Gongadze, a journalist who disappeared last September and whose headless body was later found in a shallow grave outside of Kiev.
The United States and the European Union have criticized Mr. Kuchma's government for failing to press an investigation into Mr. Gongadze's murder. Mr. Gongadze, 31, founded the Ukrainska Pravda Internet news site, (www.pravda.com.ua), which has been publishing transcripts of the recordings made by Mr. Melnichenko. Since Mr. Gongadze's death, the Internet site has been operated by his colleagues on a grant arranged through the United States Embassy in Kiev.