The online publication Obozrevatel (www.obozrevatel.com.ua) has reprinted an article by Ukrainian MP Ivan BOKIY, member of the Verkhovna Rada’s ad hoc commission investigating the murder of Heorhiy Gongadze and other high- profile cases. The author presents his view of the campaign to discredit the “Melnychenko tapes” and his opinion of the attempts (particularly of the so-called “Berezovsky group”) to shift the blame to somebody else in the Gongadze affair, i.e., to distract the prosecutors and the public from investigating the true circumstances surrounding the journalist’s death.
On the eve of May Day Obozrevatel published, within the space of 45 minutes, two sensational but contradictory articles. Yuriy Shvets (also known as Petro Liuty), former KGB undercover agent in Washington, granted an interview to Yevhen Lauer, in which he not only slung tons of mud at Mykola Melnychenko and Oleksandr Yelyashkevych but also made the outlandish claim that under President Kuchma there was a plot to stage a coup d’etat in Ukraine. The whole interview boils down to the idea that what really matters is not what the Melnychenko tapes say but how and under whose guidance he made recordings in Kuchma’s office. In other words, emphasis is now being placed not on Gongadze’s murder or the attempt on Yelyashkevych’s life but on how bad these guys — Mykola and Oleksandr — are. After Boris Berezovsky’s group handed over some evidence to Ukrainian prosecutors and Melnychenko made some recordings in this group’s London “den,” Shvets exposes a plot to whitewash Kuchma and his clique by top Ukrainian officials and the Prosecutor-General’s Office. Citing concrete examples and recordings, he shows Berezovsky’s tool of blackmail and shady schemes, including “unlawful influence on Ukraine’s public officials in Victor Yushchenko’s immediate entourage.” All this fits in with the Ukrainian media campaign to discredit Melnychenko and hush up the report of the Verkhovna Rada commission investigating the murder of Heorhiy Gongadze.
Obviously, the European Court’s unequivocal ruling that Melnychenko should immediately become a member of the Ukrainian parliament from the Socialist Party has provoked a campaign whose primary goal is to use Berezovsky’s materials to divert local and international attention from the Gongadze case to some fictitious plot against Kuchma; secondly, to whitewash Kuchma and his henchmen in this context; and, thirdly, to prevent Melnychenko from “triumphantly returning” to Ukraine and taking his seat in the Verkhovna Rada. So Shvets has come in handy here. To present their viewpoints, the parties concerned would require a large and expensive space in a newspaper. One thing is clear: it is in the interests of some Ukrainian former and current top officials from Kuchma’s entourage to muddy the waters of the Gongadze case beyond recognition and gradually replace it with the Melnychenko case. Ukrainian investigators are now questioning foreign witnesses in this (second?) case. A point that should be emphasized: they are testifying against Melnychenko, even though they are completely in the dark about the murder of Gongadze or the attempt on Yelyashkevych’s life. I strongly doubt that anyone can believe these “witnesses.” Mr. Shvets, who has found no better occupation than to make fools of Melnychenko and Yelyashkevych, says that he was interrogated at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington by the deputy head of the administration of the Prosecutor-General’s Office, Yuriy Hryshchenko, for up to 10 hours.
Now about the lies he said about me. He alleged, among other things, that I gave Melnychenko 6 CDs from the Kyiv cache on March 8, 2002. Then he added, “I was in Melnychenko’s apartment when Bokiy came and handed them over.” What Shvets says is untrue, to put it mildly, and, incidentally, there are witnesses (not only Melnychenko) who can confirm this.
The point is that I actually saw Melnychenko in Yuriy Lytvynenko’s apartment in a New York suburb in February 2002. According to stamps in my diplomatic passport, I arrived in New York on February 22 and returned to Kyiv on February 25. I have never given anything to Melnychenko at any apartment. We met on the very first night, February 22, in Manhattan, where I had booked a hotel room, and it is true that I gave him CDs right on the street. Shvets tracked me down in New York (perhaps with the help of his new masters) and came rushing from Washington to Melnychenko’s apartment on the afternoon of February 24, a few hours before my departure; therefore, I had nothing to hand over in his presence. Why do I say “tracked me down?” Because only Oleksandr Moroz and Mykola Rudkivsky knew about my visit to Melnychenko. Well, the CIA did a nice job. Shvets showered me with questions, but I, knowing that I am dealing with a turncoat who is sucking on more than one “intelligence service tit,” was on my guard and, as far as I understood, Melnychenko was also chary about the guest. Shvets resembled the proverbial devil that wastes no time in taking advantage of the situation. I can only wonder at the unprofessional memory of a person who pretends to be a career intelligence officer and Vladimir Putin’s classmate. This is either a mix-up or a deliberate lie.
Further proof that Shvets mixes up events and dates is the interview I conducted with Melnychenko for the March 1, 2002 issue of Silski visti. By the way, the interviewee also dropped a gentle hint about the Kolchuha radars, to which Bankova Street perhaps chose not to pay attention. A few weeks later this sparked a scandal. The problem is that if the prosecutors switch from the Gongadze to the Melnychenko case on the basis of testimony from such “compatriots” as Shvets or, God forbid, Berezovsky, Goldfarb, Felshtinsky, and Oleksandr Lytvynenko, this will be an inane fantasy in defense of Kuchma and Co., rather than the implementation of Viktor Yushchenko’s election slogan, “Bandits should be in prison.” If Shvets mixes up dates, he might as well be mixing up everything else. If, as Melnychenko’s London recordings show, this affair smacks of a billion greenbacks, while the truth about Gongadze’s death is being sacrificed for the sake of illusory unity in the 2006 elections, this is a logical result. No wonder some people are already advising our commission members to hold their horses. Aware that the CD affair has nothing to do with the Gongadze case but is part of the effort to frame Mykola Melnychenko, I am still requesting the prosecution to take into account my testimony that debunks Yuriy Shvets’s empty claims and exposes his overt desire to whitewash Kuchma. I think the investigators will finally see through the attempts to lead them down a political dead end.
