Fraud minister 'suicide' probe

UKRAINIAN prosecutors yesterday launched a criminal investigation into whether a minister at the centre of election fraud allegations was "driven to suicide" amid accusations that his death was part of a crude cover-up by the departing regime.

The body of Heorhiy Kirpa, the transport minister, was discovered on Monday night in his summer house near Kiev with a gunshot wound to the head.

The prosecutor general’s office said yesterday it thought Mr Kirpa had killed himself, but a spokesman said the inquiry was proceeding "under the article ‘driven to suicide’".

This is the second apparent suicide of a leading government figure this month. Yury Lyahk, 39, head of the Ukrainian Credit Bank, was found with a paperknife embedded in his throat.

Many in the opposition feel the two deaths are more than coincidence and point to corrupt members of the old regime trying to cover their tracks as a gathering storm of investigations promises to unleash one of the most wide-scale probes of a government ever seen.

Election fraud is only one of the activities of the outgoing government being targeted.

Second will be the attempted dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko in September, which he was lucky to survive.

Third will be allegations of corruption and undervalued privatisations. The most spectacular of these sales saw the state’s biggest steel plant, Krivorozhsteel, sold to a consortium including president Leonid Kuchma’s son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, for $800 million (416 million), reportedly half the sum offered by US bidders.

And there is the case of the opposition journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. His death by beheading in 2000 caused a sensation; bugging tapes apparently showed it was ordered by the governing party.

Opposition figures fear that more senior members of the former regime could die in mysterious circumstances before the corruption allegations can be properly investigated.

Both Mr Kirpa and Mr Lyahk are accused of being involved in an operation, apparently by the authorities, to rig November’s presidential election, which was re-run on Boxing Day.

Opposition chief of staff Nikolai Tomenko said yesterday there was strong circumstantial evidence that Mr Kirpa had been killed, or persuaded to kill himself, to shut him up. "I think that he as a witness would be able to tell a lot," he said.

Mr Tomenko also said there were three other top government officials he believes may be next on a "hit list" to cover up the fraud. "These men should be protected. They need official bodyguards," he said.

This protection, say opposition supporters, is to ensure they remain alive long enough to testify about their role in an election-rigging operation that saw the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, crowned president before, after weeks of street protests, it was annulled.

According to the opposition, Mr Lyakh organised payments for the fraud and Mr Kirpa, 58, had the job of arranging transport to allow a huge multiple-voting operation.

Using fleets of buses and re-routed trains on the state rail network, Mr Kirpa ensured that pro-government supporters could vote several times over by being moved, en masse, to relays of polling stations.

International monitors later estimated that the operation translated into more than a million extra ballots for Mr Yanukovich.

Later, Mr Kirpa is accused of running an operation to bring pro-government miners from eastern regions to confront opposition supporters in Kiev.

"He was considered to be one of the persons behind the falsification," said Dr Olexiy Haran, director of Kiev’s School for Policy Analysis. "He organised trains from the east part of the country and on these trains there were many people who looked like bandits."

Mr Kirpa’s death came the day after he checked out of Kiev’s military hospital, having had a testicle removed after telling doctors he had been beaten up.

He entered no details of his beating with the police.

"People who knew Kirpa personally say he was not the sort of man to commit suicide," said Yana Lemeshenko, a reporter with news agency Ukrinform. "He was not a depressive type."

The interior ministry said Mr Kirpa was found in the sauna of his country home outside Kiev."There was one gunshot wound to the head in the region of his temple. A pistol was found next to the minister," a prosecutor’s spokesman said. "This morning, the prosecutor-general launched a criminal investigation under the article ‘driven to suicide’."

Parliament has opened its own probe into the deaths. "We are gathering statements from railway employees on the [fraud] operation," said Grigory Omelchenko, deputy chief of Ukraine’s parliamentary commission on corruption and organised crime. "Some people might be fleeing abroad."

All of these probes are likely to put one man in the gun sights: Mr Kuchma.

And the prosecutions may present the incoming administration with a powerful weapon. Weeks or even months of disclosures about the extent of alleged corruption in the Kuchma regime may cement support for opposition leader Mr Yushchenko as he struggles to build a coalition from a famously fragmented parliamentary alliance.

Diplomats here say the president has been putting out feelers to Mr Yushchenko trying to secure an amnesty.

In return, he will promise a smooth transition to power, perhaps even handing over state evidence against cronies.

But such a pardon may be hard for opposition supporters to accept.

"Give Kuchma an amnesty? No way," said 21-year-old student Alex Shovkovich, part of the opposition’s Tent City still camped in Kiev city centre. "They must bring these cases to court, the guilty must be punished."