The triumph of justice,

[Editor’s note: After having read Yevhen Marchuk’s article The truth will out, Inna Yeliashkevych, Oleskandr Yeliashkevych’s daughter, wrote to The Day explaining how she felt about the attempts to whitewash Leonid Kuchma.]

“Some villains have launched a huge provocation against the nation and against [our] family,” said Viktor Pinchuk after criminal proceedings were opened against Ukraine’s second president. The country’s second richest oligarch has billions of dollars from the Kuchma family fortune in his accounts. This money is used to pay a host of both professional and amateurish “devil’s advocates.”

I have only spoken to Leonid Kuchma once. It was back in 1996, when I was 10, on the Maidan in Kyiv. After a military parade he came up to me and my father and asked him, “Is this your daughter?” Getting an answer in the affirmative, he had a nice little chat with me. I couldn’t have imagined that in a mere three and a half years this man would dramatically change both my life and the life of all my family.

My happy, care-free childhood came to an end late at night on February 9, 2000, when a phone rang in our Kherson apartment.

My tearful mother told me that there had been an attempt on my dad’s life, and he had been taken to hospital by an ambulance. Father had let us know that the attempt was masterminded by President Kuchma, and that this man would stop at nothing. Mother said that above all father was concerned about our safety, and that we must not leave home until our safety was guaranteed.

Even now, I still cannot stay calm as I’m writing this. Over these 11.5 years we have gone through thick and thin, and my parents always tried to protect me from what they had to bear. Yet since that moment, I have had my share of suffering, including a constant fear for father’s life and the lives of all the family, the flight from Ukraine, where we were in real jeopardy, the hardships of forced emigration, long years of seclusion, and many other things.

When will the second president of Ukraine answer for the suffering my family had to endure for all those years? This is no rhetorical question. I have asked it to myself for years.

The victory of justice in my homeland is a rather illusive thing. Judges, attorneys, and investigators have long become cogs in the machine of a highly profitable business in law enforcement agencies. Therefore, I have no illusions left as to the Ukrainian case against Kuchma.

Finally, I won’t in the least be upset when a part of his fortune changes hands, moving to the accounts of the Party of Regions. However, the head of the clan will hardly share the naive faith of the financially “slimmer” Pinchuk in the ability of the Ukrainian court to close the case against Mr. Kuchma and put an end to his worries.

Although he might hardly be ready to admit what he has done even to his nearest and dearest. He is perfectly aware of all the evil he has done. And he knows that he still has to pay for it, and repent. Otherwise his victims and their children will not leave him (and the heirs of his fortune) in peace.

The true legal vendetta is to start on the hills of Pechersk. And not only is he to be tried, he who gave the criminal orders, but also the state in which the police, security services, public prosecutors, and the judicial system all served as tools to commit crimes. They were also a mechanism to forge criminal cases, to conceal the truth, and to deceive both citizens and the international community. The entire state system, which has become a tool of long-lasting bare-faced, cynical, and ruthless humiliation of the victims, whose fates were decided in the topmost office of the country, is to be tried.

I’m not going to disclose the mechanisms of the strategy at the possible prospective legal processes against Kuchma outside of Ukraine.

Firstly, I’m still studying for a legal degree in an American university, and I will not run ahead and comment on the Harvard professors who are drawing big money from the devilish wallet for their image-making and legal services.

Secondly, so far let those lawyers speak who believe that an axiom is a statement that needs no proof, and therefore it may not be used in a trial. It’s a very curious thing, watching their ethics fall due to financial temptations. One such talented and energetic lawyer has even talked himself into presenting Kuchma as a victim in the case of the Georgii Gongadze assassination.

The plan, developed by the committee for saving Kuchma and his capital, is crystal clear. All it has to do is prevent the evidence against the ex-president from carrying legal weight during the trial, prevent the trial from being opened, and to discredit the main witnesses for the prosecution.

To implement this plan, the media are for the umpteenth time launching a campaign claiming that a provocation against Ukraine and its president was masterminded by some secret services, Russian, American, or Ukrainian.

It is quite probable that in the Ukrainian reality, with the generous payments from the Clan, such tactics can produce an illusion of success. The more so that crowds of hungry volunteers may line up at the oligarch’s door to offer their services in whitewashing Mr. Kuchma’s image.

The committee’s aggressive actions are causing a reaction — from those who could stay away from the process but now, just like Yevhen Marchuk, decided to share with society the truth which will eventually out.

What if some of the people start to speak now, without waiting for the future trials abroad: those who know about the notorious criminal cases monitored by the Council of Europe, or about the details of the negotiations in Moscow in 2004, and about the evidence of them being held back? Those who try to rid Kuchma from any blame can just as well lead him into a trap.

This has already happened — when anyone could see the pathological fear of the accused of confronting Mykola Melnychenko. Why, then, does the ex-president agree to confront Oleksii Pukach, who has admitted to murdering Gongadze, and flatly refuses to meet Major Melnychenko face to face? Personally I had quite a nice talk with Melnychenko five or six years ago — but I would never speak with a murderer.

By the way, I think the character and results of Kuchma’s confrontation with Melnychenko might have been different. But for some reasons my father has not spoken with Melnychenko in many years, for reasons of his own, and this is a telling factor.

I have chosen to be a lawyer because since childhood I’ve seen how the law can serve the people and my Fatherland. I’ve seen that on the example of my father, Oleksandr Yeliashkevych.

I’m proud of my father, of his professional attitude, deeds, and civil stand. His opinion on the most crucial issues is always very valuable for me. And let no one be surprised at his current silence. I know that he is still to have his weighty say at the most critical moment for Ukraine.

The time in the US has enriched me with invaluable experience. I have met and worked with the most outstanding representatives of the American establishment: politicians, attorneys, judges, lawyers, and journalists.

But the most important thing I know is that my friends are true people. They will find an antidote against the poisonous billions of the Kuchma family, and will help me in a noble and just cause.