UKRAINE: Ukrainian prosecutors yesterday opened an investigation into whether the violent death of a government minister was "assisted suicide."
The body of the transport minister, Mr Heorhiy Kyrpa, was discovered on Monday night in his summer house near Kiev with gunshot sounds in an apparent suicide.
But there is speculation here that Mr Kyrpa, accused of playing a key role in the rigged presidential elections last month, was murdered by the fraud ring-leaders.
This is the second apparent suicide of a leading government figure this month, following the death of a financier, Mr Yuri Lyakh (39), head of the Ukrainian Credit Bank, on December 3rd.
Mr Lyakh, an associate of the outgoing President, Mr Leonid Kuchma, was found with a paper knife embedded in his throat at his home.
Both men are accused of being involved in an elaborate fraud operation, apparently committed by the authorities, to rig the November 21st presidential election, which was rerun on St Stephen's Day.
The opposition chief of staff, Mr Nikolai Tomenko, said yesterday there was strong circumstantial evidence that Mr Kyrpa had been killed, or persuaded to kill himself, to shut him up.
Mr Tomenko identified three senior government officials he believes may be next on a hit list to cover up the fraud.
He named the officials as the presidential chief of staff, Mr Viktor Medvedchuk, the presidential finance chief, Mr Ihor Bakai, and the deputy secret service chief, Mr Vologymyr Satsuk. "These men need official bodyguards," he said.
This protection, say opposition supporters, is to ensure they remain alive long enough to testify about their role in an election-rigging operation that saw Mr Viktor Yanukovich crowned president before it was annulled after street protests.
According to the opposition, Mr Lyakh organised payments for the fraud, and Mr Kyrpa (58) had the job of arranging transport to allow a huge multiple-voting operation.
Using fleets of buses and rerouted trains on the state rail network, Mr Kyrpa ensured that pro-government supporters could vote several times over by being moved, en masse, to relays of polling stations.
International monitors later estimated that the operation translated into more than a million extra ballots for Mr Yanukovich.
Later Mr Kyrpa organised a second operation to bring pro-government miners from the eastern regions to confront opposition supporters in Kiev.
"He was considered to be one of the persons behind the falsification," said Dr Olexiy Haran, director of Kiev's School for Policy analysis.
Election fraud is only one of the activities of the outgoing government being targeted.
Second will be the dioxide poisoning, apparently by the secret service, of Mr Viktor Yushchenko last September, which he was lucky to survive.
Third will be allegations of corruption and undervalued privatisations organised by the outgoing President, Mr Kuchma, for the benefit of his allies.
And then there is the case of Heorhiy Gongadze. The death, by beheading, of this opposition journalist in 2000 caused a sensation with the release of bugging tapes apparently showing Mr Kuchma ordering his killing.
Gongadze's death has become a cause célèbre for opposition supporters, his name frequently chanted by the orange-bedecked protesters who still throng Kiev's Independence Square.
But it is the fraud that has caught the eye of the public here.
Mr Yushchenko's victory in Sunday's vote has seen his supporters go on the offensive this week, with parliament launching its own investigation of the deaths.
The mystery over Mr Kyrpa's death is all the deeper because it came the day after he checked out of Kiev's military hospital, having had a testicle removed after telling doctors he had been beaten up.
He entered no details of his beating with the police, raising speculation that he was attacked by organisers of the fraud as a punishment.
"People who knew Kyrpa personally say he was not the sort of man to commit suicide," said Yana Lemeshenko, a reporter with the news agency Ukrinform.
"He was not a depressive type."