Ìåëüíè÷åíêî ñóíåòüñÿ â äåïóòàòè
01/04/2002 | AST
Melnychenko wants to run for parliament
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz said his party will decide Jan. 12 whether to put former presidential security guard Mykola Melnychenko on the ballot for the March parliamentary elections.
The party congress will decide if Melnychenko’s name would be an asset or a detriment to the Socialists.
Melnychenko caused a national uproar in November 2000 after he gave Moroz scandalous recordings that purportedly implicate President Leonid Kuchma in high-level corruption and crimes, including the kidnapping of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
Melnychenko was in hiding abroad when Moroz released the tapes to the public. He is currently living in the United States under refugee status.
Less than a month after the tapes were made public, the General Prosecutor’s Office, has charged Melnychenko with slander and disclosing state secrets.
Parliament deputy Viktor Medvedchuk, a lawyer and former vice speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, told reporters in Kyiv on Dec. 28 that the criminal case against Melnychenko would not legally prevent him from running, nor does he have to be physically present in Ukraine during the campaign.
Melnychenko must fill out the Central Election Commission forms himself, but he does not have to personally deliver the documents, Medvedchuk said.
Although, technically, there are no legalities preventing Melnychenko from running, many wonder if his notoriety as a whistleblower will help him or hurt him in the campaign.
For some, his role in the tape scandal has sullied his reputation.
Volodymyr Sychkar, a 23-year-old Kyiv architecture student, said his is wary of Melnychenko.
“How can I support Melnychenko if I don’t know who made and edited his recordings,” Sychkar said.
Some even question whether the tapes, which have not undergone independent analysis, are even authentic.
In the weekly newspaper 2000 Kuchma was quoted as saying that the recordings released by Melnychenko had been deliberately edited to set up Kuchma for Gongadze’s disappearance.
“I spoke about Gongadze every day; every day I dialed the extensions of the Security Service of Ukraine, the police or the Prosecutor General’s Office and said: ‘Focus all efforts and all forces on solving the crime; let’s get this sorted out.’ These words should have been on the tape. But they are not there.” Kuchma said.
A parliamentary committee investigating Gongadze’s disappearance received at least 45 hours of recordings on CDs in December 2000 during a meeting with Melnychenko in an undisclosed European city.
The 49 audio files on the discs are in two formats: condensed audio recordings produced by a Toshiba digital voice recorder and ordinary wave-band files readable by most home computers.
The Vienna-based International Press Institute received copies of the CDs and made them available to news organizations in February. The Kyiv Post has obtained copies of the tapes.
During radio interviews in late 2000 and throughout 2001 that were aired by the Ukrainian bureau of Prague-based Radio Free Europe, Melnychenko said he had recorded conversations using a digital device concealed under Kuchma’s couch.
Melnychenko worked in Kuchma’s presidential security detail for six years after workin a year in the Kremlin guarding the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. He maintains that he acted alone in recording Kuchma and that he did so for patriotic reasons.
The New York Times quoted Melnychenko on Feb. 29 as saying his goal was “to totally expose the level of corruption in Ukraine as an independent Don Quixote and ensure thieves would never come to power again in Ukraine.”
Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksy Bahanets told Interfax-Ukraine in July that Kyiv’s Research Institute of Forensic Examination would complete an examination of the CDs before 2002. The examination has not been completed.
========
Ïðîáà÷òå øî áåç ïåðåêëàäà.
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz said his party will decide Jan. 12 whether to put former presidential security guard Mykola Melnychenko on the ballot for the March parliamentary elections.
The party congress will decide if Melnychenko’s name would be an asset or a detriment to the Socialists.
Melnychenko caused a national uproar in November 2000 after he gave Moroz scandalous recordings that purportedly implicate President Leonid Kuchma in high-level corruption and crimes, including the kidnapping of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
Melnychenko was in hiding abroad when Moroz released the tapes to the public. He is currently living in the United States under refugee status.
Less than a month after the tapes were made public, the General Prosecutor’s Office, has charged Melnychenko with slander and disclosing state secrets.
Parliament deputy Viktor Medvedchuk, a lawyer and former vice speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, told reporters in Kyiv on Dec. 28 that the criminal case against Melnychenko would not legally prevent him from running, nor does he have to be physically present in Ukraine during the campaign.
Melnychenko must fill out the Central Election Commission forms himself, but he does not have to personally deliver the documents, Medvedchuk said.
Although, technically, there are no legalities preventing Melnychenko from running, many wonder if his notoriety as a whistleblower will help him or hurt him in the campaign.
For some, his role in the tape scandal has sullied his reputation.
Volodymyr Sychkar, a 23-year-old Kyiv architecture student, said his is wary of Melnychenko.
“How can I support Melnychenko if I don’t know who made and edited his recordings,” Sychkar said.
Some even question whether the tapes, which have not undergone independent analysis, are even authentic.
In the weekly newspaper 2000 Kuchma was quoted as saying that the recordings released by Melnychenko had been deliberately edited to set up Kuchma for Gongadze’s disappearance.
“I spoke about Gongadze every day; every day I dialed the extensions of the Security Service of Ukraine, the police or the Prosecutor General’s Office and said: ‘Focus all efforts and all forces on solving the crime; let’s get this sorted out.’ These words should have been on the tape. But they are not there.” Kuchma said.
A parliamentary committee investigating Gongadze’s disappearance received at least 45 hours of recordings on CDs in December 2000 during a meeting with Melnychenko in an undisclosed European city.
The 49 audio files on the discs are in two formats: condensed audio recordings produced by a Toshiba digital voice recorder and ordinary wave-band files readable by most home computers.
The Vienna-based International Press Institute received copies of the CDs and made them available to news organizations in February. The Kyiv Post has obtained copies of the tapes.
During radio interviews in late 2000 and throughout 2001 that were aired by the Ukrainian bureau of Prague-based Radio Free Europe, Melnychenko said he had recorded conversations using a digital device concealed under Kuchma’s couch.
Melnychenko worked in Kuchma’s presidential security detail for six years after workin a year in the Kremlin guarding the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. He maintains that he acted alone in recording Kuchma and that he did so for patriotic reasons.
The New York Times quoted Melnychenko on Feb. 29 as saying his goal was “to totally expose the level of corruption in Ukraine as an independent Don Quixote and ensure thieves would never come to power again in Ukraine.”
Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksy Bahanets told Interfax-Ukraine in July that Kyiv’s Research Institute of Forensic Examination would complete an examination of the CDs before 2002. The examination has not been completed.
========
Ïðîáà÷òå øî áåç ïåðåêëàäà.