Skeletons in the Cabinet
Some Suspicious Deaths Since December 2004
When Kirpa died in late December 2004, I thought the same thing many people here thought: this was a clear case of one nasty member of the Kuchma regime killing another to make sure he doesn't tell on anyone.
At the time, I wasn't concerned about follow-up from the YuGov, because that government had only won the election the previous day - it had bigger things to think about. For example, there was a chance that local governments in Eastern Ukraine might attempt to secede, or something similarly destabilizing might happen on a national level.
But since Kirpa's death was ruled a "suicide", no progress has been made in determining if he might have been murdered. Even worse, others have died under similarly suspicious circumstances. The grossly ineffective attempts to investigate the cases of "suicide" are blots on the YuGov, and rightly so. I created this log an attempt to sort out the different cases in my mind, and hopefully it will be helpful to you as well.
If you have any more information on the deaths I report on this page, or know of any important and suspicious deaths I haven't reported, please email me.
My thanks go out to the Kyiv Post for this opinion article, which was my starting point in collecting information on the suspicious deaths under the YuGov.
Acronyms
I will be providing a lot of news site links as evidence, so rather than repeating the big names all the time, I will use the following acronyms (more to come):
KP: Kyiv Post
AUR : Action Ukraine Report
EDM : Eurasia Daily Monitor
RL : Radio Liberty
UDR : Ukraine Daily Report
UJ : Ukrainian Journal
UP : Ukrainska Pravda
Wiki: Wikipedia
FN: Foreign Notes; Levko, one of two authors of Foreign Notes, has already given me two helpful updates for this page, and has had a lot of information on Roman Yerokhin. Thanks Leo!
and of course AP is the Associated Press.
Suspicious Deaths (Reverse Chronological Order)
Roman Yerokin (died 20-Aug-06)
Position: Police Colonel and senior official in charge of the Organized Crime Fighting Board. Former Deputy Head of the OCFB in Donetsk. This board is subordinate to the Interior Ministry, now headed by Yuriy Lutsenko.
Cause of Death: Multiple gunshot wounds
Official Reason for Death: murdered, but no officially named suspects. Everyone in the government is apparently on the unofficial suspect list: RoU deputies, BYT deputies, even Lutsenko himself.
Additional Info: There is no end in sight to the insinuations and shouting from deputies regarding Yerokhin's death. The volume seems inversely proportional to the chance of any actual resolution. As it has gone up, the chances of a solution have evaporated.
Sources: FN (2, 3) KP, UP (2)
[picture from KP]
Igor Pluzhnikov (died 22-Jun-05)
Position: Media Mogul, former SDPU(u) Parliamentary Deputy, Owner of Inter Kanal (one of the top-3 Ukrainian television stations)
Cause of Death: Was ill with "toxic hepatitis" and flown to Germany in mid-June. Rumored to have been poisoned.
Official Reason for Death:
Additional Info: There were some rumors circulating that Pluzhnikov was in the midst of selling his stake in Inter to an undisclosed Russian buyer, accompanied by speculation that he was doing so under pressure.
Sources: UJ, Forbes, KP,
[picture from the Verhovna Rada website]
Yuriy Kravchenko (died 04-Mar-05)
Position: Interior Minister under Kuchma
Cause of Death:
Official Reason for Death:
Additional Info: Kravchenko died just before he was to give testimony to the YuGov regarding the death of Georgiy Gongadze. His death sparked a lot of accusations in Parliament, and from then-Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko, that the YuGov had been repeatedly warned that Kravchenko needed to be protected. This, in turn, sparked some speculation that the YuGov might have let him be killed, though I can't see how this would be at all in their interests.
ZN analyzes the "suicide note" left at the scene of his death, and questions: 1) why no mention of any of the accusations against him was made in his suicide note; why it mentioned almost nothing at all, in fact, and looked like a resignation letter to them. 2) Why General Kravchenko, who was, by accounts, clearly a "military man" would kill himself in plainclothes, not in his uniform.
Sources: ZN1, ZN2, KP, MSNBC, Wiki
[picture from AP]
Roman Nikiforov (died 13-Feb-05)
Position: Donetsk businessman and regional government deputy; Director of the Artyomovsk Champagne Factory
Cause of Death: shot with rubber bullets from his own gun
Official Reason for Death: accidentally shot himself in the head
Additional Info: close associate of richest man (oligarch) in Ukraine, Renat Akhmetov.
Sources: KP, Obozrevatel (Ukr) via Levko,
[picture from the Artyomovsk Champagne Factory website]
Heorhiy Kirpa (died 27-Dec-04)
Position: Minister of Transportation under Kuchma
Cause of Death: Gunshot wound (sometimes reported as wounds) to the head
Official Reason for Death: suicide
Additional Info: Before his death, Kirpa had been implicated in having the Ukrainian railroad provide free transportation to Yanukovych, as well as pressuring his workers to back Yanu.
As for the way he died, I'm going to just repeat what my buddy Discoshaman commented at the time "This reminds me of that line from Police Squad: 'Seventeen stab wounds to the back... this is the worse case of suicide I've ever seen.'" Some of the reports on Kirpa's death stated that he had been shot in the head more than once.
Sources: BBC, AP, KP, Wiki, EDM, CBS,
[picture from Novy Kanal]- Yuriy Lyakh (died 03-Dec-04)
Position: Chairman of Ukrainian Credit Bank (a second-tier bank which grew significantly in 2004), wielder of significant influence in the SDPU(u)
Cause of Death: letter opener to the throat (again, possibly multiple times)
Official Reason for Death: suicide
Additional Info: Lyakh was a close associate of Medvedchuk, and through him, President Kuchma. His bank was thought to have been a major channel for laundered money used in Yanukovych's presidential campaign.
A "suicide note" was found at the scene. KP said it best when they commented, "Who kills himself with a paper knife?"
Sources: KP, EDM, ZN1, ZN2, Maidan, Korrespondent,
By the Way, I'm Not Covering Georgiy Gongadze (killed on or shortly after September 16, 2000)
Western news sources spend lots of time talking about this case. Ukrainian news sources spend lots of time on the case. Wikipedia has an entry on him. Abdymok spends lots and lots and lots of time on this case. So does KP, the paper he works for. I limited this page to deaths since Dec-2004 partly so I don't have to deal with this case.