The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine is prepared to detain former Major Mykola Melnychenko in case he returns to Ukraine either before or after he is elected, if ever, to parliament, Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Bahanets told Interfax- Ukraine. He recalled that criminal proceedings had been initiated and were still being conducted against Melnychenko in Ukraine. “The ex-major has been accused of committing two felonies: abuse of power and divulgence of state secrets,” Mr. Bahanets noted (The new Criminal Code of Ukraine provides for a seven to ten year and five to eight year prison term for the former and these crimes – Ed.). Mr. Melnychenko is also charged with forgery.
The deputy prosecutor general also said, “Should Melnychenko come to Ukraine, he will be subjected to measures the law envisions against individuals who are under criminal investigation, have been ordered to stand trial in accordance with the law... Mykola Melnychenko will be apprehended, indicted, put under investigation, and, if there is sufficient evidence of his guilt, his case will go to court,” Mr. Bahanets announced. In case M. Melnychenko is elected to parliament, the Prosecutor General’s Office “will act in compliance with the law... We will request Verkhovna Rada to agree to impose criminal responsibility on him,” he said. Asked whether the criminal case will be further investigated if the parliament refuses to make Melnychenko bear criminal responsibility, Mr. Bahanets said the prosecutors “would have to suspend investigating the case if all the necessary inquiries had been made by that time, and wait either for Verkhovna Rada’s consent or for the termination of Melnychenko’s parliamentary mandate. Four years later, we will act in compliance with the law and try to bring him to justice,” he stressed. He specified that the statute of limitations under which this criminal case can be dropped would expire only in 2010.
As was reported earlier, Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) leader Oleksandr Moroz announced that Melnychenko intended to arrive in Ukraine in March after being registered as a candidate running on the Socialist Party ticket. On January 12, the SPU congress approved the party’s election list where Mr. Melnychenko is in fifteenth place.
SPU political council secretary Yury Lutsenko does not think at all that the so-called tapegate is a thing of the past. On the contrary, the current election campaign gives, in his opinion, a unique chance to again focus the attention of the Ukrainian electorate to the Melnychenko tapes. “By placing him on the SPU election list,” Mr. Lutsenko says, “we are thus breaking through the information blockade. It is not so important whether he will rank fifth, fifteenth, or twentieth, the main thing is everyone will be talking about him.” This is how the Socialist functionary revealed the reason why the major is on the party list.
The SPU political council secretary claims that the Socialists “did not invite Mykola Melnychenko” but that he asked to be put on the party list. Early in January the major rang Oleksandr Moroz and asked to meet him at the Vienna Airport. Earlier he also put out the feelers about being admitted to the blocs of Yuliya Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko.
Mr. Lutsenko said that Major Melnychenko is determined to return to Ukraine during the election campaign even though he could be arrested. The Socialists studied all the juridical aspects of his likely registration as a Verkhovna Rada candidate and concluded that it as possible. At any rate, Verkhovna Rada’s decision on former Premier Yukhym Zviahilsky seems to have set a similar precedent. To start off, the major will before returning to Ukraine, hold a press conference in a Central European country bordering on Ukraine, perhaps Poland, Mr. Lutsenko said.






