08/15/2003 | peter byrne

The Yeltsov Chronicles

"Сейчас современную журналистику косит страшная болезнь - все какие-то прогнозы делают, анализируют слухи, которые сами же и порождают. Информацию добывать надо. Мое личное мнение не интересует никого. Сейчас интересуются моим мнением только потому, что я являюсь носителем какой-то информации. Гончаров тоже был носителем информации, но он в отличие от нас, ничего не прогнозировал. Он ножками бегал, следил, собирал чего-то, записывал. А все эти прогнозы политической ситуации, это все до лампочки." - Hlavred (Aug. 15, 2003)


Articles about Oleh over the years... (I apologize for any factual mistakes)


Aug 13 - 2003: Watermellons in a cage

Jul 05 - 2001: Igor Smeshko's folly?

Jun 29 - 2001: SBU questions Yeltsov

Apr 19 - 2001: Yeltsov - Putting Melnychenko's tapes in context

Jan 19 - 2001: Who followed Gongadze?

Sep 28 - 2001: Yeltsov and Gongadze's disappearance

Jul 20 - 2000: Government sleuths hound Gongadze



Watermellons in a cage
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Aug 13, 2003 16:54

The Prosecutor General’s Office on Aug. 11 downplayed the significance of the posthumous testimony of a key witness to the unsolved murder of opposition journalist Georgy Gongadze, as evidence for the authenticity of the document mounted.

Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko said that a 17‑page letter allegedly written by Ihor Honcharov, a retired Kyiv police officer who died in police custody on Aug. 1, reveals nothing new that could help them identify the journalist’s killer.

“All these so‑called facts divulged in Honcharov’s letter have already been checked,” Medvedko said.

A former senior police officer in Kyiv’s organized crime bureau, Honcharov was arrested in May 2002 and accused of leading the Werewolves, a criminal gang made up of former police officers and suspected of several kidnappings and murders.

The PGO has also been investigating the possible involvement of the Werewolf gang in the murder of Gongadze in fall 2000.

The PGO on Aug. 5 received copies of Honcharov’s statement, which included an 8‑page declaration, a 4‑page letter addressed to Prosecutor General Syatoslav Pyskun and three un‑addressed pages.

Honcharov died in police custody on Aug. 1. His remains were cremated on Aug. 3 and buried on Aug. 9.

Honcharov’s lawyer, Vyacheslav Smorodinov, told reporters on Aug. 8 that he had not received an official notification of the cause of Honcharov’s death. Smorodinov added, however, that he possesses a certificate, dated July 8, listing Honcharov’s numerous post‑traumatic disorders, including palsy of the hands and legs.

Smorodinov, a lawyer with the G&K law firm, said Honcharov’s ailments resulted from injuries sustained during police interrogations conducted in May and June 2002.

“We have the following situation: a healthy individual is arrested, injured, undergoes surgery and states that he has been beaten,” Smorodinov said.

Smorodinov also provided a copy of a medical report on Honcharov’s injuries issued last Nov. 2.

The document quotes Honcharov as saying he sustained his injuries when police beat him on June 11, 2002. The “mechanism of the trauma,” according to Honcharov, was “a direct blow (or blows) to the stomach.”

Smorodinov said he requested prison authorities and the PGO on numerous occasions to investigate possible mistreatment of his client, but he never received a reply.

The Institute for Mass Information, a Kyiv‑based non‑profit organization funded by philanthropist George Soros, and by the governments of the United States, France and the Netherlands, received a package containing Honcharov’s testimony by regular mail on Aug. 4.

The package bore the words, “To be opened after my death.”

IMI posted excerpts from some of the letters on its site (www.imi.org.ua) on Aug. 5 before turning over photocopies of the documents to the GPO. In its publication on the Web, IMI deleted the names of individuals, except for one.

Hryhory Omelchenko, chairman of the parliament ad hoc commission investigating Gongadze’s murder, and the parliament’s human rights commissioner Nina Karpacheva also received copies.

“I, Honcharov Ihor Ihorevych, a Ukrainian citizen born in 1959 in the city of Kyiv, am writing this statement being in my right mind and good memory, and I am asking those who will receive it to make it public,” begins one of Honcharov’s alleged statements, dated Feb. 24, 2002.

In the statement, Honcharov said that Gongadze was abducted and killed by a number of employees of law enforcement agencies in collaboration with organized criminals. He also suggested that high‑ranking law enforcement officials were implicated in the Gongadze killing and other crimes.

“These crimes were committed on the direct orders of [...] Interior Ministry [...], and subsequently of [...],” he wrote. “Also implicated in these kidnappings were the highest officials of the state [...] who knew about them.”

Honcharov further claimed he was tortured at a police compound on Moskovska Square after Serhy Khomula, then head of the Kyiv organized crime bureau, demanded that he withdraw testimony implicating highly‑placed police officials in Gongadze’s murder. Honcharov wrote that he was beaten mercilessly in June 2002 after refusing to comply.

“Khomula also demanded that I give evidence in my possession to him for destruction,” Honcharov wrote. “He insisted that I give false testimony concerning the facts under investigation, promising, in return, that I would only be regarded as a witness in the case.”

Alla Lazareva, IMI President, told the Post on Aug. 11 that it deliberately did not delete Khomula’s name in excerpts of the letter released on the Internet, as it did with the other individuals named.

“We wanted journalists to follow up on the lead and ask him and his ministry to respond to the allegations,” Lazareva said.

An employee from the unmarked organized crime bureau compound on Moskovska Square told the Post on Aug. 8 that Khomula had been transferred to a job in the Interior Ministry early in 2003.

“Khomula was promoted,” he said. “What’s it to you?”

Oleksandr Kharlamov, chief of staff at the Interior Ministry, told the Post on Aug. 11 that Khomula was unavailable to comment on Honcharov’s charge or his promotion. He said the ministry’s press service would reply to written questions addressed to Khomula at the ministry within 30 days.

Omelchenko said Aug. 12 that Honcharov’s parents told him that the handwriting in the letters received by IMI belonged to their son.

The handwriting was also identified by Oleh Yeltsov, a Kyiv‑based crime journalist who has said he used Honcharov as a source for dozens of investigative articles over the years.

Yeltsov told the Post Aug. 11 that he also believed Honcharov was the author of the letters because the information contained in them matches what Honcharov told him in early 2001 about police involvement in Gongadze’s disappearance.

Yeltsov authored an article in January 2001 naming the police officers who shadowed Gongadze before his disappearance. He confirmed on Aug. 11 that Honcharov was the source of his information.

“Honcharov told me in early 2001 that two teams from the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Bureau were assigned to follow Gongadze in July 2000,” Yeltsov said. “Three agents were asked to resign ‘temporarily’ and were promised reinstatement six months after the scandal ebbed.”

Yeltsov said his relationship with Honcharov was probably the reason for the assault on him on July 24, when he was waylaid near his apartment by two men wielding a lead pipe and an electric shock device.

“Maybe someone thinks Honcharov told me too much about Gongadze’s disappearance,” Yeltsov said.

Yeltsov has requested SBU protection for himself and his family. The request was initially rejected, but IMI reported on Aug. 13 that the PGO would ask SBU agents to provide protection for Yeltsov and his family.

The PGO has also scheduled a press conference about the Honcharov affair for Aug. 14.

Lazareva said IMI is re‑thinking its decision not to publish the Honcharov letters in their entirety on the Internet.

She told the Post on Aug. 12 that IMI still wanted to be certain that Honcharov authored the letters before posting them.

“The situation is changing quickly,” Lazareva said, adding that it was “entirely possible” that IMI will post all of Honcharov’s so‑called evidence on the Internet in the near future.


***


Igor Smeshko's folly?
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Jul 5, 2001 18:00

Ukrainian lawmakers on July 3 requested that Ukraine’s State Security Service chief and prosecutor general mount a “comprehensive and impartial investigation” into corruption allegations against a former SBU chief and his son that were published last month on a news Web site.

The articles allege that former SBU chief Leonid Derkach and his son, Andry, an influential Labor Ukraine deputy, are linked with powerful businessmen Semen Mogilevich and Vadym Rabinovich.

The story, citing confidential reports, alleges that the elder Derkach, while chief of Ukraine’s Customs Service from 1996 to 1998, knowingly ignored shipments of bootlegged fuel and cigarettes bound for Central Europe. It also reported that Derkach’s son assisted Rabinovich in cutting a deal to sell state‑of‑the‑art Motor Sich engines to the Israeli military for use in spy planes.

Andry Derkach and Rabinovich are believed to control the private TV company Era, whose programmes go out on UT‑1, and at least five newspapers and one news agency.

The articles, written by journalist Oleh Yeltsov, appeared on Kriminalnaya Ukraina, a Kyiv‑based news site.

On June 26 the SBU questioned Yeltsov about his articles and launched a criminal investigation, claiming that he may have published state secrets on his site.

The articles in question, titled “From the lives of the Derkach Family,” contain documents that were allegedly leaked by Ukraine’s Armed Services Intelligence Directorate (ASID) as well as excerpts from reports sent to ASID by foreign intelligence agencies.

The chief of the Interior Ministry’s directorate for fighting organized crime formally asked ASID in 1999 to collect and report “objective, widely sourced information” on the activities of Rabinovich and Mogilevich, according to Yeltsov’s report.

Yeltsov would not say who gave him the documents. According to Ukrainian law, journalists are not legally obligated to disclose their sources.

SBU spokesman Oleksandr Skripnyk has refused to comment on the case. A U.S. Embassy official who Yeltsov said he met with on June 27 also refused to comment.

As a witness in a criminal matter, Yeltsov is under a gag order, which forbids him to divulge details about the case.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office has given no indication whether it plans to act on the Rada’s request for an inquiry, which is a non‑binding request.

Fellow journalist and Svoboda editor Oleh Lyashko, who was present during the three‑hour search of his colleague’s apartment on June 26, said Yeltsov turned over to authorities copies of the documents, including some from a Russian source that were classified as “Top Secret.”

Rabinovich, a dual citizen of Ukraine and Israel, was expelled from Ukraine for five years on June 24, 1999, for “causing especially serious damage to the Ukrainian economy,” according to official documents at the time. Rabinovich last August told the Post in Kyiv that he attributed his expulsion to political intrigue, denying that he had ever been officially banned.

Ukraine’s State Tax Administration says it “posseses no evidence that Rabinovich conducted business and received income in Ukraine” and acting Prosecutor General Mykola Harnyk says “all materials supporting the decision to bar Rabinovich from Ukraine two years ago have been destroyed,” UNIAN news service reported on July 3.

On June 28, in an interview with Radio Liberty, Rabinovich blasted recent reports appearing in Western media linking him to criminal activities and citing reports filed by U.S. federal agents in 1994.

“Again we are hearing cliches; again a person is being marked for life in writing that he is linked to the criminal world, that he is a gold smuggler and is part of a criminal syndicate. This has not been proved in court, but the person has already been smeared,” Rabinovich said.

Semen Mogilevich, who last year gave an exclusive interview in Rabinovich’s newspaper, Stolychnye Novosti, also has denied links to organized crime.

“I’m a simple wheat trader,” Mogilevich was quoted as saying in the article.

Andry Derkach, who was in Moscow on June 25‑28 to attend the “Information: Challenge of the 21st Century” conference, made his views about the bad press against him clear in a report he read titled “Liberal dictatorship is worse that the totalitarian kind.”

In his speech, he argued that recent events in Moscow, Kyiv and Prague demonstrate conclusively that press liberties in Eastern Europe have “been transformed into the freedom of unabashed manipulation.”


***


Opposition journalist questioned by SBU
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Jun 29, 2001 18:00

The State Security Service has launched a criminal investigation into whether veteran investigative journalist Oleh Yeltsov violated Ukraine’s criminal code by publishing state secrets on his Web site Kriminalnaya Ukraina.
On his e‑zine, which was launched in May, Yeltsov published previously unreported material linking Ukrainian officials and deputies to Ukraine’s alleged international crime bosses.

Security Service agents served Yeltsov with a subpoena at 8:30 a.m. on June 26, ordering him to appear for questioning a half hour later.

“I was planning to meet with investigators from Kroll Associates investigating the disappearance of journalist Georgy Gongadze,” Yeltsov explained. He agreed to be questioned only after officers indicated that they would use force if he did not go willingly. SBU agents returned to Yeltsov’s apartment later in the afternoon to search for classified documents.

As a witness in a criminal case, Yeltsov is forbidden by law to divulge what he discussed with SBU agents.

SBU spokesman Oleksandr Skripnyk would not comment on specifics of the case because it involves classified information, he said. But he said that under Ukrainian law, publishing classified information carries a sentence of two to five years in jail.

Ukrainian media have reported that classified information – some entire documents and some excerpts – was published in three articles titled “From the life of the Derkach Family” on Yeltsov’s site in June.

In the articles Yeltsov describes a collaborative effort between the FBI and Ukraine’s intelligence service to determine if former SBU chief Leonid Derkach and his son Andry, an influential businessman and Labor Party deputy, were in cahoots with powerful businessmen Semen Mogilevich and Vadym Rabinovich. Both Mogilevich and Rabinovich have told journalists over the years that they are law‑abiding businessmen.

But FBI and Israeli intelligence documents from August 1996 that were obtained by the Post identified a link between UkrZaliznytsia, Ukraine’s state‑owned railroad company, and Mogilevich, whom U.S. federal agents suspected was using Ukraine’s railways to transport bootlegged fuels to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech republic.

Rabinovich, a Ukrainian citizen, was barred from entering Ukraine for five years on June 24, 1999, “for causing especially serious damage to the Ukrainian economy,” according to documents. He has since been allowed to return.

According to Yeltsov’s report, U.S. federal agents have alleged in official documents provided to Ukrainian intelligence agencies that Rabinovich traded in weapons, oil, narcotics, natural gas, chemicals, precious metals, fertilizers, agricultural commodities and more.

Yeltsov said that being called as a witness in a case involving state secrets indicates that the sources and documents he has used in his articles are authentic.

“And if that’s the case, why haven’t law‑enforcement authorities prosecuted government officials for abuse of office and corruption?” he said.

Yeltsov thinks he knows the answer.

On Sept. 15 an anonymous caller instructed him to “give up his tricks on the Internet,” saying his articles were disturbing “influential people.”

Yeltsov told the Post at the time that the threat was probably related to an article that appeared on the Russian Internet site Federal Investigation Bureau under the name Ivan Stepanov.

That 19‑page investigative report, titled “Volkov without sheep’s clothing,” examined in great detail the biography of Oleksandr Volkov, an influential deputy and adviser to President Leonid Kuchma.

The Internet news site Ukrainska Pravda republished the article in September. Pravda founder Georgy Gongadze vanished two weeks later and his mutilated corpse was found in a village south of Kyiv in November.

Gongadze’s disappearance and the release of secretly recorded tapes implicating Kuchma in the case sparked a nationwide scandal.

In several of those recorded conversations, two men with voices remarkably similar to Kuchma’s and Derkach’s discuss Yeltsov’s articles.

The following exchange came from tapes that were released to the public.

Kuchma: What’s up with [Yeltsov]?

Derkach: I already ... filed a report.

Kuchma: I see that it is your report.

Derkach: Well, they scared him. They called him in Kyiv. And he fled to Armavir [Russia], to his mother.

Kuchma: So, he’s not here in Ukraine any more.

Derkach: No, but he called his wife from Armavir a couple of times and told her, ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back, maybe in a week or so.’ I’m not sure, though, because of the Gongadze affair. We’ve already given the FSB [Russian Secret Service] a situation report.


***


Putting the Melnychenko tapes in context
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Apr 19, 2001 15:00

Ukrainians have known for years that foreign linguistic experts pick up on much less in conversation than native speakers. However, few expected that the time would come when the standard of competency turns out to be the ability to construe accurately what have been officially classified as state secrets.

While the participants in conversations allegedly recorded in President Leonid Kuchma's office seem to understand what they are saying, foreign specialists - even employees of Radio Liberty's Ukrainian Service - are still struggling to keep up, at least publicly.

Much is taken for granted between the speakers recorded, whoever they really are, and important communications take place without explicit linguistic reference. To the uninformed and tin-eared, the flow of words seems continuous, despite clear markers of the boundaries of meaningful information.

Professional transcribers know, of course, that listening comprehension is a classic "learn-by-doing" task, in which it is essential to adopt the strategy of listening for key elements around which to construct meaning, all the while moving along with the flow of discourse.

In reading mode, difficulties can readily be solved by rescanning the text, since the reader controls how information reaches the eyes. But listening is quite different.

Those familiar with the recordings cannot effectively ask decision-makers in the West to "listen faster," nor will study of non-normative speech per se produce direct improvement in their ability to hear at the rate Kuchma and comrades speak.

Western analysts who have listened to the conversations are either finding it enormously difficult to understand what is actually being said or are playing dumb while busily compartmentalizing the intelligence for future use.

In any case, forensic linguists employed by Ukraine's law organs have yet to come up with anything much better for helping locals comprehend what was allegedly said, much less by whom or when.

In Ukraine just like anywhere else, people interrupt each other and talk at the same time, ambient noise masks speech sounds, and politicians do not pronounce words as consistently as the written language would lead us to believe. But missing (and superfluous) acoustic signals are more than compensated for by situational and contextual elements in the conversations.

That some "hear" what may be obscured or totally lacking in the recordings is principally because a significant portion of what can be understood is supplied by the context of the exchanges. Native speakers draw on vast amounts of shared knowledge to construct meaning when they are listening. It is not so much that the speech sounds "contain" meaning; it is rather that they "trigger" meaning.

As an example, consider this dialogue in which [now former] State Security Chief Leonid Derkach reports to Kuchma on the whereabouts of Oleg Yeltsov, the investigative Ukrainian journalist who fled to Armavir in the south of Russia on Sept. 16, the day journalist Georgy Gongadze disappeared in Kyiv.

Relying chiefly on the Derkach's voice quality and hesitant speech, Kuchma appears to understand that a major scandal is in the offing.

Here is a partially translated transcript of the actual exchange, which evidently took place a short time after Gongadze vanished. (The content of this translation differs in several important details from the Ukrainian transcript of this conversation that was posted on Radio Liberty's Web site on March 28.)

Kuchma: What's up with Yelkovich?
Derkach: Do you mean Yeltsov?
Kuchma: Yes, Yeltsov.
Derkach: I already said, er, filed a report.
Kuchma: I see that it is your report.
Derkach: Well, they scared him. They called, uh, er, um, [in Kyiv]. And he fled to Armavir, to his mother.
Kuchma: So, he's not here [in Ukraine] any more.
Derkach: No, but he called his wife from Armavir a couple of times and told her, 'I don't know when I'll be back, maybe in a week or so.' I'm not sure, though, because of the Gongadze thing. We told the FSB [Russian Secret Service] of the situation there.

The informed listener can easily fill in the missing or slurred elements - including the name Armavir - by assuming that both Kuchma and Derkach are interested in Yeltsov's whereabouts, even though neither elaborates that knowledge in depth.

One can also deduce that even though Kuchma has a temporary lapse of memory when it comes to Yeltsov's name, he certainly knows who he is.

The ability to fill in missing information, a commonplace in human behavior, has been termed "analysis by synthesis" by psychologists. It refers to the strategy of internally generating or "shadowing" what people say (or do) so that we may more easily reduce the number of possibilities to consider.

Policy makers in the West should take the time and make full use of their processing capacity to thoroughly examine and publish the secret recordings allegedly made in Kuchma's office. As long as ignorance is bliss, Ukraine's future will be static.


***


Yeltsov has info on gov't sleuths
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Jan 18, 2001 17:00


An investigative journalist claims to have learned the identities of Interior Ministry agents who tracked Georgy Gongadze weeks before the opposition journalist disappeared last September.

The journalist, Oleh Yeltsov, reported the names of the agents, along with evidence to back his claims, to the ad hoc parliamentary committee that is looking into Gongadze's disappearance.

Yeltsov learned the identities of the men from sources he declined to name. He claims the men following Gongadze were Interior Ministry agents.

Yeltsov said "the order to monitor (Gongadze's) activities was given by Interior Minister Kravchenko, who received regular briefings."

Yeltsov says two teams from the Interior Ministry's Criminal Investigations Bureau were assigned to follow Gongadze. The first squad of sleuths was disbanded shortly after Gongadze notified the office of the Prosecutor General in July.

"Three agents were asked to resign 'temporarily' and were promised reinstatement six months after the scandal ebbed," said Yeltsov, citing his unnamed sources.

"Government agents recently destroyed case files and obliterated records on the surveillance of opposition politicians and journalists," he added.

The same day Gongadze went missing, Yeltsov was strip-searched twice while a passenger on a Russia-bound train. He was assigned Interior Ministry bodyguards on his return to Kyiv last fall.

Interior Ministry spokesmen said last summer they were unaware of any investigation of Gongadze or his employees.

On Jan. 17, Interior Ministry spokesman Viktor Sidorenko refused comment on Yeltsov's allegations, referring all matters related to Gongadze's disappearance to the General Prosecutor.

"We are allowed to say nothing about anything relating to the Gongadze affair," he said.

Others have corroborated the allegation that Interior Ministry agents watched Gongadze and other Ukrainska Pravda employees.

Radio Continent General Director Serhy Sholokh, Gongadze's former boss, said a colonel from the Interior Ministry interviewed him on July 10 about whether it was possible that Gongadze would associate himself with armed insurrection groups. Gongadze's mother, Lesya, said she was interviewed by plainclothes agents in her home in Lviv about her son's activities.

In meetings Jan. 12 with members of the monitoring committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko said his office handled the complaints of harassment properly.

"We took all legal measures to ensure Gongadze's safety after he appealed to us in writing," Potebenko said.

Potebenko aide Aleksy Baganets noted that Gongadze did not assert that he had been threatened, but merely complained he and his colleagues were being harassed.


***


Yeltsov caught up Gongadze case
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Sep 28, 2000 15:00


Oleh Yeltsov doesn't write spy novels for a living.

But to hear him tell of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of journalist Georgy Gongadze, you'd think that he did.

Although he's not personally or professionally acquainted with Gongadze, who mysteriously disappeared on the night of Sept. 16, Yeltsov, the investigative journalist is linked to the vanished reporter through the publication on the Internet of several articles and editorials alleging high-level corruption in Ukraine.

Yeltsov won't say whether he wrote the material, which appeared under the name of Ivan Stepanov, but Gongadze's disappearance and Yeltsov's own problems coincided with the publication of "Stepanov's" latest article, titled "Volkov without a fleece."

The article is a 19-page investigative report on the influential businessman and politician Oleksandr Volkov. It details previously unreported and unappealing allegations against the oligarch, including alleged links to organized crime and shady business deals.

The article was first published on the Russian-based Web site Federal Investigative Bureau on Sept. 4. It appeared on Gongadze's Web site - Ukrainska Pravda - the next day.

According to Yeltsov, several influential people, particularly Volkov, Interior Minister Yury Kravchenko and President Leonid Kuchma, would have been very upset by the allegations in this and previous articles.

Yeltsov says he started to receive threatening phone calls on Sept. 15, the day before Gongadze disappeared.

"Oleh Dmitrievich [Yeltsov], shut your mouth and listen up. Your articles on the Internet are disturbing influential people, who are fed up with your Secret Services (SBU) tricks. Your time is running out..."

"Can you tell me what I can write about?" Yeltsov asked.

But the caller hung up.

Yeltsov immediately filed a complaint about the threatening call with his local police department in Kyiv's Kharkivsky district. Militia officers later visited his apartment to interview him.

The day after Gongadze disappeared, on Sept. 17, Yeltsov received another mysterious call:

"OK, Smart Aleck, so you called the police..." Then the caller hung up.

Leaving his apartment building that morning, Yeltsov said he noticed a dark green Zhiguli car, bristling with antennae, parked near his building. Two large men were inside.

Yeltsov said he immediately recalled reading about a dark green car that had been parked outside the office of Ukrainska Pravda in July, when Gongadze first said that he was being harassed by people who claimed to be agents of the Interior Ministry.

"When I saw the green car, it occurred to me that the authorities might be trying to pressure me psychologically. I didn't think there would be any physical retribution - after all, when they call you, they don't plan to kill you."

Later that day, Yeltsov and his young daughter boarded a train bound for Russia on a previously planned trip made more urgent by the threatening calls. An hour before leaving, he called his former colleagues at the UNIAN state news agency and told them about the threatening calls and his interviews with the police.

The trip was an eventful one. A few hours out of Kyiv, the train was stopped at Shevchenko station. Plainclothes officers identifying themselves as "railroad police" checked passengers' passports.

After asking the other passengers in Yeltsov's compartment to leave, they thoroughly searched both his and his daughter's belongings.

"I asked the senior officer to show identification and provide me with a document showing I'd been searched and nothing had been found, but he refused," Yeltsov said.

When the train stopped again next morning, at the border station of Ilovayskaya, Yeltsov and his daughter were searched again.

"This time two plainclothes agents, a customs official and a sniffer dog came into our compartment," Yeltsov said. "One of the men showed me a card identifying himself as an SBU officer from Odessa oblast. He said the SBU and customs would check our belongings.

"When I told him we'd already been searched, he seemed surprised. 'Write out a [declaration that they've been searched],' he told his subordinate, adding 'Hold the train for as long as it takes.'

"After delaying the train's departure for about 30 minutes, one of the agents left me his card and telephone number. 'We'll get to the bottom of this,' he said."

Although Yeltsov has yet to be contacted by the police in connection with Gongadze's disappearance, the Interior Ministry apparently believes Yeltsov is in need of protection. During an interview with the Post in a downtown Kyiv hotel on Sept. 25, after his return from Russia, Yeltsov was taken aside for a chat with four men from the Interior Ministry. He returned with two of the men, whom he introduced as "bodyguards" assigned to him by the Interior Ministry.

As for the deepening mystery of the whereabouts of Georgy Gongadze, Yeltsov believes that only by finding Gongadze can the law enforcement agencies remove suspicions that they themselves were behind the journalist's disappearance.

"The whole affair could have been conceived in the bowels of the Interior Ministry or the SBU," Yeltsov said in an interview with the Web site proua.com on Sept. 25.

"The leadership of these formidable agencies have enough clout to prove their innocence by just doing their job, that is, find the [kidnapper] - and Gongadze."


***


Gov't 'sleuths' hound online paper
By Peter Byrne, Kyiv Post Staff Writer
Jul 20, 2000 18:00

In what looks like another clampdown by Ukrainian authorities on independent media, law-enforcement officials have allegedly been harassing the editor and several staff members of Ukrainska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), a popular independent Internet publication on Ukrainian politics.

On July 14, the site’s editor-in-chief, Hryhory Gongadze, appealed in an open letter to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General to reign in their sleuths, who he accuses of harassing his family, friends, employees and potential contributors.

All five of the electronic paper’s employees have been approached by security officers over the past two weeks and quizzed about trade in narcotics, Chechen killings and their possible involvement in other illegal activities.

According to Gongadze, plainclothes agents have even been knocking on doors and interviewing relatives in his hometown of Lviv.

“They even interviewed my mother in Lviv,” said Gongadze, who speculated that officials were looking for a pretext to scare off employees and run off potential investors who have expressed an interest in his site.

Interior Ministry spokesman Viktor Sidorenko told the Post on July 17 that he was unaware of any investigation of Gongadze or of the employees of the site.

He was unwilling to comment further.

“Why should I tell you anything? I have never seen you before,” he told a Post reporter.

Ukrainska Pravda offers free daily news reports and analysis on economic and political developments in Ukraine.

Many of the articles posted on the site are written by correspondents of Grani, a newspaper associated with Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz, who has consistently criticized policies implemented by President Kuchma and his influential backers.

“We are independent financially and editorially and have rejected offers from well-connected Ukrainian businessmen to invest in the site,” said associate editor Olena Prytula, who admitted that articles appearing on her site have been critical of government officials and their policies.

Radio Continent general director Serhy Sholokh, Gongadze’s former boss, said that on July 10 a colonel from the Interior Ministry interviewed him about whether it was possible that Gongadze could or would associate himself with armed insurrection groups.

“It was a strange conversation that lasted about an hour,” said Shokov, who denied the possibility that the exercise could be a stunt designed to increase traffic on Pravda’s Web site.

“Gongadze has never hidden the fact that he is not a fan of President Kuchma,” Sholokh said.

Pravda is not the only newspaper being subjected to such probes. No less than three individuals working closely with foreign media outlets recently told the Post off the record about being subjected to questioning similar to that experienced by Ukrainska Pravda employees.

Kuchma was rated the world’s sixth worst enemy of the press by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in late May of last year.

Foreign media watchdog organizations, including arms of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe, reported that the Kuchma administrations’ record on free speech worsened in advance of the presidential election last year. Kuchma was roundly criticized for using his power to manipulate and intimidate both voters and independent media in his drive for a second term in office.

Kuchma has vehemently denied all past allegations that his administration interferes with free press or intimidates media outlets.

A recent poll of leading journalists conducted by respected weekly Zerkalo Nedeli indicated asked journalists what subjective factors hinder impartial coverage of news in Ukraine. Journalists listed shortage of information, fear and faintheartedness as the top-three factors.


***

Correspondent: Killing The Story

Tx Date: 21st April 2002




This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being
unclear or inaudible



00.00.00

Music



00.00.07
Tom Mangold
A dead journalist, his headless corpse found in a shallow
grave.



00.00.11

Music



00.00.14
Tom Mangold
A bodyguard on the run for his life, a price on his head.



00.00.18

Music



00.00.21
Tom Mangold
An embattled President secretly recorded and implicated
in murder, international crime and corruption.



00.00.28

Music



00.00.35
Tom Mangold
The Ukraine is in crisis – one that stretches far beyond its
borders.