Until recently the assassination of Yevhen Shcherban, a well-known businessman and politician from Donetsk (November 3, 1996), was considered the most sensational act of terrorism in Ukraine.
Shcherban, a People’s Deputy (13th convocation) and President of the Anton Corporation, was shot down with his wife in broad daylight at the Donetsk Airport. The killers professionally vanished from the scene. For several months afterward the news made headlines in the central and regional press. Then, as always, the case faded from the public scene.
Vadym Hetman, one of Ukraine’s biggest financiers, was the next in line early this summer. This contract job made even more reverberations, and the Shcherban story again surfaced on the crest of the Hetman case. Regrettably, no further information was unearthed, except for law enforcement’s routine assurances of inevitable retribution.
In September, however, the first signs appeared that the public opinion was being prepared to see the investigation in the Shcherban case in a new light. First, the Kievskie novosti (Kyiv News) carried an intriguing page one article promising that the Shcherban case would be solved before long. The author, citing reliable sources, claimed that the information law enforcement authorities were going to make public would become a number one sensation in Ukraine. On September 12, Interfax-Ukraine, also referring to a reliable source, reported the discovery of the killers’ bodies and that certain persons had been arrested and were being questioned as suspected accomplices, including “several former ranking officials.”
Suppose we try to use this scarce data and put two and two together.
First, the promised nationwide publicity in the Shcherban case points to the executive’s interest. Indirectly, this is evidenced by the “information leak” pattern: Kievskie novosti (which is identified by competent sources as having strong guardians in high places) and Interfax-Ukraine with its reliable sources in the presidential entourage.
Secondly, in both cases it was strongly hinted that some dignitaries were involved in the murder. In this country it has become an axiom that any negative information about the authorities is never leaked but always planted, more often than not preceding an election or other political campaign. This is called “use of compromising information to neutralize political rivals.” The technique was first effectively applied during the 1998 Verkhovna Rada elections and now we are facing the 1999 presidential campaign.
In other words, one can try to trace the backbone of the coming sensation. First, the alleged ranking accomplices, always good food for sensation, no doubt. Without conclusive evidence no one is going to point an accusing finger, but it is possible to categorize the versions relating to the Shcherban case. Proceeding from the dignitary standpoint, there are very few.
Version 1. In December 1996, People’s Deputy Taras Kyiak, referring to Oleksandr Omelchenko (then Chairman of the Committee to Combat Organized Crime and Corruption), declared that Leonid Kuchma was said to have personally ordered Shcherban’s assassination, whereupon Omelchenko sued him for libel and slander. Considering the said backbone, Mr. Kuchma does not fit into the “ex-ranking” category; he is still President in command of all power structures in Ukraine. Cross out the Kuchma vs. Shcherban version.
Version 2. On November 15, 1996, Valery Kulakov, Prosecutor of the Donetsk Transport Prosecutor’s Office, announced that there could be a link between the Shcherban case and the attempt on Premier Pavlo Lazarenko that summer. Previously a number of Ukrainian newspapers hinted at Shcherban’s complicity in the attempt on Premier Lazarenko. Thus, Pravda Ukrainy came out with an appropriate article, referring to the Estonian newspaper Sinumileht. This version holds that Shcherban wanted to get even with Lazarenko as the former, allegedly, tried to liquidate the latter when delimiting spheres of influence between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk mobs. Lazarenko survived and hit back. And he does fit into the “ex-ranking” category.
Version 3. In January 1997, Deputy Interior Minister Leonid Borodych stated quite confidently that Yevhen Shcherban’s death was simply another episode in the never-ending gangland war, the result of sorting out finance sources and spheres of influence. “There is no politics involved,” he stressed, referring to information available to the investigating authorities. Outwardly, this version points to no ranking officials whose involvement could lend the whole thing a political coloration.
It is safe to assume that the future sensation, if and when it takes place, will reach its peak after revealing ex-Premier Lazarenko’s complicity or that of any in his entourage. In a way, it will be a response to the Hromada-sponsored impeachment proceedings.
However, it is also possible that the preliminary “information leak” was a signal to top-level bureaucrats to keep a low profile and stay away from active political games in conjunction with the presidential campaign. Practice shows that incriminating documents are most effective when hinted at, rather than produced. Why show one’s hand and then face inevitable and unpleasant questions about ranking executive officials putting out contracts on undesirable businessmen and the President, as Chief Executive, looking the other way?






