Cassette Scandal

The Cassette Scandal (Ukrainian: Касетний скандал [kɐˈsɛtnɪj skɐnˈdɑl]; Russian: Кассетный скандал), also known as Tapegate or Kuchmagate, was a Ukrainian political scandal in November 2000 in which Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma was caught on tape ordering the months-earlier kidnapping of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, whose decapitated corpse had recently been found. The scandal was one of the main political events in Ukraine's post-independence history, dramatically affecting the country's domestic and foreign policy. The scandal, triggering the Ukraine without Kuchma protests, also began a slow and gradual shift of Ukraine's political and cultural orientation from Russia towards the West, although this only became more pronounced after Euromaidan in 2013–2014. The scandal also damaged Kuchma's political career.

Background

Georgiy Gongadze, journalist, founder of a popular Internet newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000.

Georgiy Gongadze, the editor of a Ukrainian internet newspaper which focused on corruption, disappeared on 16 September 2000. This produced growing pressure on Ukraine's president Kuchma, who promised to personally oversee the investigation into Gongadze's disappearance. On 3 November a decapitated corpse was discovered not far from Kyiv. As the body had been doused with acid, it was impossible to establish the persona of the deceased through fingerprint analysis, however friends and relatives identified the body as belonging to Gongadze.^[1]

Scandal

Publication of the recordings

The scandal started on 28 November 2000, in Kyiv, when Oleksandr Moroz, head of the opposition Socialist Party of Ukraine, publicly accused Kuchma of involvement in the abduction of Georgiy Gongadze and numerous other crimes, presenting records of the president's conversations with senior officials as evidence. Moroz named Kuchma's former bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, as the source of the records.^[1] He played selected recordings of Kuchma's secret conversations for journalists, supposedly confirming the president's order to kidnap Gongadze. That and hundreds of other conversations were later published worldwide by Melnychenko.

Melnychenko, a former security service officer, claimed that the recordings had been made by him in order to stop "abuses of power" by the government. According to him, the records were made by hiding the recording device under a sofa in the president's office. After creating the recordings, Melnychenko fled abroad.^[1]

Journalists nicknamed the case after the compact audio cassette used by Moroz. Melnychenko himself was supposedly using digital equipment, not cassettes, for recording in the president's office.

Content of the tapes

On the recording, a person with a voice similar to president Kuchma can be heard discussing ways of getting rid of Gongadze, using crude language. No mention of possible murder is present in the tapes, but the speakers talk about kidnapping the journalist or transporting him to Chechnya.^[1]

Political consequences

President Kuchma denied that his voice could be heard in the recordings and accused his opponents of provocation, slander and attempt to trigger a political crisis.^[1] Mass protests took place in Kyiv from 15 December 2000 to 9 March 2001. Opposition started a campaign of non-violent resistance called UBK ("Ukraine without Kuchma"), demanding Kuchma's resignation. Despite economic growth in the country, President Kuchma's public approval ratings fell below 9%.

In 2002, the governments of the United States and other countries became more deeply involved after one of the recordings revealed the alleged transfer of a sophisticated Ukrainian defence system Kolchuga to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As a result, Leonid Kuchma was boycotted by Western governments for a time. In particular, he experienced an offensive diplomatic démarche when visiting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit that took place on 21–22 November 2002 in Prague. Breaking the decades-lasting tradition, the list of participating countries was announced in French, not English. As a result Turkey was named after Ukraine, instead of the United Kingdom and the United States, thereby avoiding the appearance of Kuchma next to Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

Moreover, widely publicized conversations depicted Kuchma as a rude and spiteful person, using profanity and speaking Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian languages.

Influenced by all of the above, president Kuchma soon became disillusioned with European integration and started to loosen Ukraine's relations with the United States and European Union, both critical of his regime. Kuchma boosted integration with Russia, considering the fact that its new leader, Vladimir Putin, continuously supported Kuchma and refused to recognize the allegations.

In September 2003, Ukrainian troops joined U.S.-led invasion forces in the Iraq War, which was widely perceived as an effort by Kuchma to improve relations with the West. After that, high-level relations were partially restored.

Commenting on the scandal and Melnychenko's actions in particular, Kuchma persistently claimed they were a result of foreign interference, but never accused any specific country. However, some of his statements may be interpreted as cautious hints on the role of either the United States or Russia. According to Kuchma, his voice was indeed on the tapes, but he claimed that they had been selectively edited to distort his meaning.^[2]

Authenticity of the recordings

Dutch experts reportedly confirmed, that the tapes had no traces of editing or other alterations, but it was impossible to prove that the voice in them belonged to the president.^[1]

Advocates argue that excessive foul language is the proof of a deliberate montage of the recordings using extrinsic audio samples. However, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, said that the tapes are genuine, undistorted, unaltered, and not manipulated, based on the FBI Electronic Research Facility's analysis of the original recording device and the original recording. These analyses found that there were no unusual sounds which would indicate a tampering of the recording, that the recording was continuous with no breaks, and there was no manipulation of the digital files.^[3][4]

Legacy

Demonstration in memory of Gongadze in Tarashcha, near the location where his body had been discovered in November 2000

Many figures of the scandal remained influential in Ukrainian politics. The case was directly connected with the political career of Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's prime minister at the time. Oleksander Moroz concluded an alliance with Yushchenko, resulting in the reformation of Ukraine's constitution (in favor of the parliament). Hundreds of politicians and activists taking part in the 2001 protests led the 2004 Orange Revolution. Yushchenko led the revolution after the presidential election, and became president on 23 January 2005.

Mykola Melnychenko (who received U.S. political asylum) released new portions of his recordings. In 2004, Volodymyr Tsvil, a Ukrainian businessman who assisted Melnychenko in his escape, publicly accused him of not revealing certain details of the case and trying to sell the audio archive to Kuchma's aides. Melnychenko visited Ukraine in 2005 to release new allegation details, but has not disclosed any details of his possible eavesdropping operation.

The criminal investigation regarding the circumstances of Melnychenko's records and Georgiy Gongadze's death remains inconclusive despite a mass of information revealed by numerous journalistic investigations.

Melnychenko's recordings were declared evidence when Kuchma was charged with abuse of office and giving illegal orders to Interior Ministry officials; a criminal case into the murder of Gongadze was opened against Kuchma on 21 March 2011.^[5] A Ukrainian district court ordered prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Kuchma on 14 December 2011 on grounds that evidence linking him to the murder of Gongadze was insufficient.^[6] The court rejected Melnychenko's recordings as evidence.^[7]

See also

• Myroslava Gongadze, widow of Georgiy Gongadze.
• Orange Revolution
• Ukrayinska Pravda, newspaper founded by Gongadze
• Mykola Melnychenko, bodyguard of the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
• Politics of Ukraine
• History of Ukraine