KIEV, April 6 – Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko on Wednesday called for broadening investigation against former President Leonid Kuchma to target other politicians, including President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Tymoshenko made the comment after first deputy prosecutor general Renat Kuzmin admitted that compromising recordings made by Kuchma’s former bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko could be used as evidence.

“If there are no double standards, and the recordings by Melnychenko have gone through examination and identified as original, then parts of the recordings that carry conversations between Yanukovych and Kuchma, and Azarov and Kuchma, must be picked,” Tymoshenko said.

The comment shows that Tymoshenko, who is investigated for alleged abuse of power during her time as the prime minister in 2009, has been seeking to escalate the Kuchma investigation into political crisis that may shake up the current government.

Kuchma is under investigation for alleged involvement in the murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze in September 2000, and prosecutors have based their charges the recordings made by Melnychenko.

Melnychenko, who claims to have made thousands of hours of secret recordings in the office of Kuchma between 1996 and 2000, insists that Kuchma had given illegal orders targeting Gongadze.

But other recordings that have been published over the past 10 years, implicate involvement of many other politician, including those in the current government, in alleged illegal actions.

For example, at least one recording suggested that Azarov, then the head of the tax agency, discussed with Kuchma how the president’s confidant Ihor Bakay had allegedly stolen 300 million hryvnias and what he should do to cover up the theft.

Another such recording shows that Yanukovych, then the governor of the Donetsk region, has been apparently falsifying election results in the region to help Kuchma win re-election to the presidency in November 1999.

Kuzmin, who opened the investigation against Kuchma last month, said the Melnychenko recordings had been identified as important evidence after voices recorded had been identified as belonging to Kuchma and other senior officials.

“The more quality examination of the recordings was conducted in the fall of 2010,” Kuzmin told Fokus magazine. “We also confirmed there was no editing of the recordings. That’s why the recordings were used as a basis for charging Kuchma.”

Kuzmin also mentioned Volodymyr Lytvyn, the speaker of Parliament and then the chief of staff at the Kuchma administration in 2000, as a person whose voice has been recorded and recognized and may be used in the Gongadze investigation.

This is the first time that the prosecutor has mentioned Lytvyn as a possible target of the Gongadze investigation. Lytvyn earlier admitted the investigation was an attack against him.

The development makes vulnerable all three Ukrainian leaders, including Yanukovych, Azarov and Lytvyn, to a scandal that may potentially escalate into a serious political crisis. (tl/ez)