KIEV, Sept. 14 – Yuriy Kravchenko, a former interior minister dead since March 2005, ordered the murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze in September 2000, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Tuesday.

The charge was made as prosecutors completed investigation of Oleksiy Pukach, a former top police officer who is alleged to have killed Gongadze, and are preparing to submit the case to court.

“Since he [Kravchenko] is dead, the [separate] case against him will be closed,” Yuriy Boychenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, told Ukrayinska Pravda.

The investigation, despite original expectations, falls short of naming any other senior Ukrainian officials that may have been involved in the murder of the journalist.

Kravchenko, a close ally of former President Leonid Kuchma, was found dead in his garage in March 2005 on the same day when he was supposed to be questioned in the prosecutors in the Gongadze case.

Police said Kravchenko had committed a suicide by shooting himself - twice - in the head. A hand-written note found near Kravchenko’s body had accused Kuchma of unspecified politics.

The murder, in September 2000, had shocked Ukraine’s political landscape triggering massive demonstrations with protesters alleging that Kuchma, then the president, was involved.

Kravchenko, as well as Kuchma and his former chief of staff, Volodymyr Lytvyn, who is now the speaker of Parliament and an ally of President Viktor Yanukovych, were alleged by Mykola Melnychenko, Kuchma’s former bodyguard, of conspiring against Gongadze.

Melnychenko released tape recordings that he had made secretly on which voices similar to those of Kuchma, Kravchenko and Lytvyn are heard of discussing taking an unspecified action against Gongadze.

Kuchma and Lytvyn have repeatedly denied the allegations.

“So far I have more questions than answers,” Valentyna Telychko, a lawyer representing Myroslava Gongadze, a widow of Heorhiy Gongadze, told BBC radio. “The announcement causes my personal distrust.”

“The fact that they named Kravchenko as the only one who had ordered the murder means they had never named those who had ordered it,” Telychko said.

“First of all, I don’t see any personal motive for Kravchenko to kill the journalist,” Telychko said. “There must be a motive.”

There were speculations that the authorities have used the Gongadze investigation to put pressure on Lytvyn to force him to join a coalition with Yanukovych’s Regions Party.

“The fact that Lytvyn is on the hook now is truth,” Telychko said. “For many years politiciasn have bee using this case for blackmailing each other and for political speculations.”

“One of the reasons why this investigation has been delayed was the desire by politicians to use the case for political dividends,” Telychko said.

Pukach, a former head of surveillance department at the Internal Affairs Ministry, was captured in July 2009 after a six-year manhunt by the law enforcement agencies.

Pukach, who apparently admitted murdering Gongadze, was also named as being the killer by three his subordinate police officers who had been jailed in March 2008.

Pukach was seen as the only person who could lead investigation to those who had actually ordered the murder, which had shaken Ukraine’s political landscape since September 2000.

Pukach is the only top police officer linked to the Gongadze investigation who is still alive. His three former bosses, including Kravchenko, Eduard Fere and Yuriy Dagayev, are all dead. (tl/ez)