The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is going to do its own examination of those Major Melnychenko’s tapes that concern the murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. SBU chief Oleksandr Turchynov revealed this important piece of news to journalists last Wednesday. He said the tapes are already being studied. “We’ve talked a lot about international testing, but now we want to do our own, especially now that the leadership has changed,” Mr. Turchynov said. The tapes are supposed to be examined for about a month. The SBU chief is convinced that the Ukrainian examination will be qualitatively as good as a foreign one. Besides, “you can never have enough testing,” he said, adding that the Melnychenko tapes will be simultaneously studied by the FBI in the United States. An agreement to this effect was reached during Mr. Turchynov’s recent visit to the US. The SBU has at its disposal an almost 700-hour-long section of Melnychenko’s recordings, which came into the possession of the counterintelligence service through various channels. Commenting on the Gongadze case investigation, Mr. Turchynov said, “There are many people who are not interested in this case being solved and tried, and, undoubtedly, the media often receive distorted information meant to obstruct the activities of investigators and operatives.”
Speaking about the investigation of economic crimes, the SBU chief said that 40 cases dealing with illegal VAT refunds exceeding UAH 1 billion have been launched. “The current rate of illegal refunds should arouse serious concern in this country,” he added. In other words, one of the most dangerous aspects of corruption, for which the old regime was criticized, is still alive and kicking. “In the past two months alone, we have prevented over UAH 300 million in losses to the budget,” Mr. Turchynov noted. By all accounts, the situation with other, no less serious, economic crimes in this country is equally alarming. For instance, the SBU managed to uncover the illegal cross-border outflow of capital worth a total of $1,200,000,000, which Mr. Turchynov says prompted his agency to launch a special operation dubbed “Dirty Linen.” At the same time, the SBU has smashed 10 illegal conversion centers that have processed more than 4 billion hryvnias.
Touching on the struggle against terrorism, Mr. Turchynov said that since the beginning of this year the SBU has barred 255 individuals from entering Ukraine on suspicions that they are linked to extremist political and religious organizations or terrorist groups. According to Mr. Turchynov, the SBU has “one of the best antiterrorist centers whose experience is being studied by our foreign colleagues.” Mr. Turchynov singled out the protection of state secrets as a top-priority direction of his agency’s activities. He says it is crucial to drastically cut the number of officials who have access to official secrets. Since the beginning of the year, the SBU has closed access to 500 official secrets and reduced by 25,000 the number of offices that have access to official secrets, resulting in savings of $10 million for the state budget.
Asked whether the present state leadership is protected against eavesdropping, Mr. Turchynov said he hopes that eavesdropping is impossible. At the same time, the SBU chief pointed out that the informational security of the offices occupied by the president and the prime minister is provided by the State Bodyguard Directorate, not the SBU, while the latter “deals with a wider range of issues.”
