International investigators are confident that the Ukrainian government is behind Sheremet’s murder
The International Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime believes that the Ukrainian authorities were involved in the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This was stated by the co-founder of OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) Drew Sullivan in an interview with the Kyiv publication “Ukrainian Pravda”, with which Sheremet collaborated.
According to him, both the murder of Georgy Gongadze in 2000 and the murder of Pavel Sheremet in 2016 “were most likely political.”
“Such murders are more difficult to solve. I think Melnichenko’s tapes indicate that he knew about Gongadze’s murder,” Sullivan said.
“As for Poroshenko, we don’t know whether he or someone from his administration ordered the murder of Sheremet, but we think that the Ukrainian authorities are involved in this,” he said.
Sullivan explained his reasons: “The authorities deliberately do not get to the bottom of the truth, do not publish information that should be made public.”
“We still have not heard an answer whether Igor (Ustimenko, seen on surveillance video the night before Sheremet’s murder - ed.) works for the SBU or has already been fired - and why, what exactly he did in the authorities, etc. ", - he said.
An OCCRP co-founder noted: “In many cases, journalists are killed to create a sense of insecurity. Especially in a territory that is at war. The goal is to increase support for the current government in times of instability.”
“Of course, the Ukrainian authorities would be happy to say that this is Russia. And there is such a possibility. But the evidence suggests rather that it was done domestically,” Sullivan said.
“Journalists are often just pawns in a complex game. A large percentage of them were killed not for their specific investigation, but simply for them to play a role,” he added.
Sullivan also noted that there is a global problem: “90% of investigations into the murders of journalists are not closed.”
He advised reporters to continue investigating on their own. “Sometimes it takes 10 years. And this is normal,” said a representative of the Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime.
He sees that in Ukraine, “the media and public sector are openly intimidated”: “If the authorities felt safe, they would not attack the media and would allow them to tell their stories. But the actions of the authorities demonstrate that their intentions are unclean,” Sullivan said.
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a non-profit project that unites a number of regional centers for investigative journalism from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.
International investigators are confident that the Ukrainian government is behind Sheremet's murder.