Prosecutor General’s investigators find Kravchenko ordered Gongadze’s killing

As the 10th anniversary of Georgy Gongadze’s disappearance approaches, the Internet Publication Ukrainska Pravda reports that the Prosecutor General’s investigation is to find that General Oleksy Pukach received the order to kill Gongadze from the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yury Kravchenko*.

Ukrainska Pravda has learned from its sources that the investigator issued a resolution on 7 September according to which Pukach faces three charges under the Criminal Code.

The resolution asserts that around 13-14 September 2000 Kravchenko gave Pukach a verbal instruction to kill Georgy Gongadze and thus put an end to his journalist activities.

The resolution apparently also states that acting out of personal interest and career considerations, not wishing to complicate relations with the MIA management, and also counting on gaining the support of Kravchenko and receiving a promotion and increase in special rank of a police officer, Pukach,agreed to carry out Kravchenko’s order, that is to being commissioned to kill Gongadze.

It also asserts that Kravchenko issued the order for the abduction and violence against assistant to Deputy Serhiy Holovaty, Oleksy Podolsky, in order to encourage the latter to stop his opposition activities.

The charges against Pukach are for murder with aggravating circumstances, the same crime but on commission, and for exceeding his powers and official authority where this was accompanied by violence, inflicting pain or the use of weapons.

From the report here: http://pravda.com.ua/news/2010/09/13/5379996/

 *  From a BBC report in 2005: 

Ukraine’s security service chief has said the death of former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko last month was almost certainly suicide.

"There is no other version but suicide," Oleksander Turchynov said, citing forensic and ballistics tests.

Kravchenko was found dead with two gunshot wounds to the head on 4 March in his country house outside Kiev.

He was due to testify later that day about the high-profile murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000.

Mr Turchynov said among possible reasons of Kravchenko’s apparent suicide was the "burden (of the Gongadze case) he hauled for the past four years".

Kravchenko left a suicide note blaming former President Leonid Kuchma for Gongadze’s death, Ukraine’s investigators say.

They say in the note he described himself as "a victim of the intrigues of Kuchma and his entourage".