Addressing a press conference in Kyiv, Secretary of the Council for National Security and Defense Yevhen Marchuk said he did not publicize the videotape which allegedly confirmed that the death of the People’s Movement of Ukraine leader Vyacheslav Chornovil in a car accident was a contract murder because the content of the tape was quite controversial. With no proof of the tape authenticity, making it public would have bought him a lawsuit three weeks before the start of the presidential elections, Interfax-Ukrayina quotes Mr. Marchuk as saying. “Had I publicized the tape, I would have had charges pressed against me the second or the third day afterward,” the secretary said. Since there was no proof of the tape’s authenticity, a court would have condemned Marchuk for lying or even slander, imposing criminal liability on him before the presidential elections were over, which meant that three weeks before the elections presidential candidate Marchuk would have been faced with a trial he was unlikely to win. @TT If we go by the videotape, Mr. Marchuk continued, it follows that a special force policeman, an accomplice in the crime, had been shooting a film of himself, something, in Marchuk’s opinion, which defies common sense. As Marchuk added, since the tape had information on Chornovil and Natalia Vitrenko, another presidential candidate and the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, “it would make more sense to give the tape to Vitrenko.”
It has been earlier reported that People’s Deputies Hryhory Omelchenko and Anatoly Yermak have prepared an appeal to the secretary demanding that the tape be turned over by Marchuk. The Rukh deceased leader’s son, Taras Chornovil, demanded criminal charges be filed against Marchuk, viewing this as the only lever to force the Prosecutor General’s Office to step up its investigation of Vyacheslav Chornovil’s death. Given the present political situation in Ukraine, one might get the impression that, in order to gain political capital, someone would like to cash in on Taras Chornovil’s natural feelings and wish to know the circumstances of his father’s death. Unversed as Taras Chornovil is in politics, it cannot be ruled out that someone wants to capitalize on his natural ambition by prompting him that such a move could put him closer to becoming the leader of Rukh, a position which cannot and should not be heritable.
