Myroslava Gongadze appeals decision to quash charges against Kuchma

Valentina Telychenko, the lawyer representing Georgy Gongadze’s widow, has lodged an appeal with the Kyiv Court of Appeal against the decision of the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv on 14 December 2011 which quashed the criminal proceedings against former Presidentt Kuchma in connection with Georgy Gongadze’s murder.

As reported, the court found that the only grounds for the decision by First Deputy Prosecutor General Rinat Kuzmin to initiate criminal proceedings were the tapes made by Mykola Melnychenko. It cited the Constitutional Court judgement from October 2011which stated that prosecutions could not be based on information received through investigative operations carried out by people unauthorized to do so.  Major Melnychenko acted on his own initiative when he illicitly taped conversations between Kuchma and others.

MsTelychenko stated from the outset that she believed the decision by the Pechersky District Court to be unlawful. Even without Melnychenko’s tapes, she said, there are enough grounds to initiate criminal proceedings against the former President.  She asserts that by determining that Kuchma is no longer the accused, the judge made an assessment of the evidence which she was not entitled to do at that stage of the court examination. “The judge was also not objective in her approach to the information which formed the basis of the criminal case. She did not notice the evidence which it was inconvenient to notice. The testimony of other witnesses, just as the Melnychenko tapes, she evaluated and decided to consider as not containing any evidence of elements of criminal behaviour by the former President.”

Information about Wednesday’s appeal reported by UNIAN