Ukraine Ex-Minister Linked to Murder Found Dead

KIEV, Ukraine -- Former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko, linked to the murder of investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze, has apparently committed suicide, officials said on Friday.

President Viktor Yushchenko has accused his predecessor's administration of covering up Gongadze's murder, the most famous criminal case in post-Soviet Ukraine. He told his interior minister to take control of the inquiry into Kravchenko's death.

A spokeswoman for Ukraine's SBU security service, Marina Ostapenko, said by telephone that Kravchenko's body had been found at his country house near Kiev. Investigators had gone to the site and a preliminary investigation pointed to suicide.

Kravchenko, interior minister at the time of Gongadze's murder in 2000, had been due to give evidence on Friday to prosecutors in connection with the case.

"The president of Ukraine believes that the death of former interior minister Yuri Kravchenko may be linked to the investigation into the case of Georgiy Gongadze," a statement issued by Yushchenko's office said.

Yushchenko said this week the murder had been solved and declared the conduct of the investigation a matter of "personal honor." Three policemen have been detained and a fourth is being sought.

INVESTIGATION PROCEEDS

Ukraine's chief prosecutor said this week that Gongadze had been abducted in central Kiev by high-ranking officers, suffocated at a site outside the city and his body then doused in petrol and set ablaze.

He said the investigation was focusing on establishing which security officials had ordered the murder. Gongadze's body remains unburied, kept in a Kiev mortuary.

The discovery of Gongadze's headless corpse outside Kiev became a turning point in the scandal-plagued 10-year term of former president Leonid Kuchma.

Kuchma, who stepped down after Yushchenko's inauguration in January, was accused of involvement in the murder on the basis of tapes of conversations secretly recorded in his office by a former bodyguard.

But he has always denied any connection with it and no conclusive evidence was ever presented. Kuchma remains on an extended holiday in the Czech resort of Karlovy Vary and made no comment on the case's latest developments.

On the eve of Kravchenko's death, several officials had appealed to prosecutors to take special measures to ensure that the former interior minister did not take his own life.

"A man who wants to kill himself will always find the opportunity," Transport Minister Evhen Chervonenko told reporters. "The Gongadze case is proof of our democracy."