By Oleh Lyashko, Svoboda, Kiev, in Ukrainian 6 Apr 04; p 5
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Monday, Apr 12, 2004

Lviv Region council head Mykhaylo Sendak has said he is not going to resign despite pressure from top state officials. Speaking in a newspaper interview, Sendak said Ukrainian first deputy tax chief Serhiy Medvedchuk and the United Social Democratic Party headed by his brother, presidential administration chief Viktor Medvedchuk, are intent on having the council head dismissed.

They were behind embezzlement and fraud charges filed against him, Sendak said. He added he was also offered compensation if he ceased to oppose them. However, he and the Lviv Region council would continue to expose "illegal" activities pursued by the party's leadership, Sendak said.

The following is the text of the interview Mykhaylo Sendak gave to Oleh Lyashko, published in the Ukrainian pro-opposition newspaper Svoboda on 6 April under the title "I will not be an easy prey for the ghouls!"; subheadings have been inserted editorially:

As Svoboda has already reported, when moving to Kiev to take the post of first deputy head of the State Tax Administration earlier this year, [the brother of the Ukrainian presidential administration chief, Viktor Medvedchuk, Serhiy] Medvedchuk Jr predicted that his old opponent, Lviv Region council chairman Mykhaylo Sendak, would resign "of his own accord" by the end of the first quarter. On 1 April, Svoboda's correspondent met Mr Chairman in one of Kiev's hospitals, where he was last week, and took an exclusive interview.

CONFLICT WITH MEDVEDCHUKS

[Lyashko] Mr Sendak, have you resigned as was announced by Medvedchuk?

[Sendak] No, I am not going to do this. As long ago as in February, my opponents in the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine [USDPU, led by Viktor Medvedchuk] alleged that they had collected over 50 council members' signatures to demand my resignation. So last Tuesday [30 March] I attempted to hold a session of the regional council in Lviv where I proposed deliberating on this issue. Yet council members of the faction led by Medvedchuk Jr [Social Justice] did not turn up at the session, which blocked its work. In view of this, after consulting with other council members I decided to ask the parliamentary speaker [Volodymyr Lytvyn] to dissolve our council.

[Lyashko] Back in February the USDPU accused you of committing "housing" abuse. Where are you living now?

[Sendak] As before, I live in Drohobych [a town in Lviv Region]. I did not spend a single day in a flat in Lviv bought for me using budget funds. I am not going to move into it, although I am legally entitled to do this. Incidentally, the flat was purchased at the insistence of USDPU council members who later created a scandal around this.

[Lyashko] When did your problems with the USDPU begin?

[Sendak] In 2002. Immediately after I was elected chairman of the regional council, I said that we were not going to be only an appendix to the executive the way it had been in Lviv after Vyacheslav Chornovil [a prominent right-wing Ukrainian opposition leader who died in a car crash in 1999] had left for Kiev.

The confrontation was aggravated by the tragedy on the Sknyliv airfield [near Lviv, where a fighter jet crashed into a crowd of spectators during an air show] in August 2002. Back then, contrary to the position of the then governor, [Myron] Yankiv, we tried to tackle the issue of misspending millions of hryvnyas allocated for the Sknyliv victims. After a session of the regional council passed a vote of no confidence in Serhiy Medvedchuk in June 2003 and demanded that he resign, the conflict came to a head.

[Lyashko] What would Medvedchuk and Co achieve by ousting you from your post?

[Sendak] Today this "justice" group has almost everything in their hands both in Lviv Region and elsewhere in the country: administrations, courts, law-enforcement and tax agencies, customs and cash flows. Although it does not have some serious levers of influence, the regional council is a serious obstacle to them because its statements attract public attention to their usually illegal activities. Why would USDPU guys need a chairman who continuously rubs their nose in this?

CRIMINAL CHARGES DISMISSED

[Lyashko] As is customary in our country, the USDPU responded by accusing you of committing crimes, didn't they?

[Sendak] Yes. First, the tax authorities accused a transport enterprise, which I had run for 18 years before I was elected regional council chairman, of misspending budget money and evading taxes. It was told to pay over 7m hryvnyas [about 1.32m dollars] in fines. After we dismissed these charges in courts of all instances, the Drohobych District prosecutor's office initiated a criminal case on a fraud charge.

Currently, this case is being considered by the Prosecutor-General's Office, and I do not know what is happening to it there. I stand accused of fraudulently buying the transport enterprise shares without paying their holders. I can assure you that these charges are absolutely unsubstantiated and that I have never done anything like this.

[Lyashko] Yet you did buy the shares, didn't you?

[Sendak] In 1999. I did this to prevent the enterprise from being purchased by then city mayor [Oleksiy] Radziyevskyy whose son had his eye on the enterprise. When I moved to the regional council, I gave these shares to the head of the [enterprise's] trade union. They did not yield any dividend anyway. And then, what is wrong with buying these sorry shares? Why has this fact not interested anybody for five years?

[Lyashko] If you believe there is nothing criminal about your actions and the shares were paid for, you have nothing to worry about.

[Sendak] I wish it were like this! The transport enterprise's shareholders who total over 600 people are being worked on by some 200 tax and police officers. People are caught and brought to the prosecutor's office where they are forced into confessing that I seized their shares by force, threatening to sack them. The tax authorities offer money to many of them to get them to say whatever is needed. There are a few people whom I sacked for absenteeism and alcohol abuses who have already given necessary testimonies. Nevertheless, hundreds of other people send me letters describing how they are being pushed into giving false testimony.

[Lyashko] How will you act if the prosecutor's office asks the court to issue an arrest warrant for you? You have no immunity [from prosecution].

[Sendak] For this to happen, there should be grounds, but there are none in my case, as my lawyer Bohdan Ferents maintains. However, I do not rule out that Medvedchuk can try this to subdue Lviv Region and the regional council, which is able to prevent the planned rigging of the [31 October] presidential election. I will defend myself with all the legal means available to me because I have not done anything for which I should be criminally prosecuted. I will not be an easy prey for these ghouls! I am not going underground.

[Lyashko] An acquaintance of mine, now former Luhansk mayor Serhiy Lukyanenko also said he would not give up. When he was detained here in Kiev in November 2003, he even threatened he would slit his veins. Luhansk governor [Oleksandr] Yefremov did to him what Medvedchuk wants to do to you.

At first, Lukyanenko faced criminal charges of tax evasion, then he was removed from his post of mayor. After that he was jailed, and new elections were held without him. Now that he is no longer dangerous, he has been set free.

[Sendak] I assure you that I am not going to either slit my veins or commit suicide in any other manner. Our task is to prevent usurpation of power by the USDPU not only in Lviv Region but in the country at large. For this we all have to be safe and well.

"LAVISH" OFFERS REJECTED

[Lyashko] You could have already solved all your problems if you had agreed to your opponents' proposals.

[Sendak] Indeed, I have never been as poor as I am now, but I declined to accept housing, a job in Kiev, any sum of money which were offered to me. Following this, criminal charges were brought against me, and there are attempts to sack my son who is employed by the Chernihiv prosecutor's office. The Communist system is not even slightly comparable to what is currently going on in our state!

[Lyashko] For how long are they going to be after you?

[Sendak] For as long as Medvedchuk Sr, who backs his younger brother in every possible way, is head of the presidential administration. I am prosecuted on dreamt-up charges which will crumble as soon as the USDPU loses its grip on the law-enforcement agencies.

[Lyashko] Did you appeal in court against a decision to initiate a criminal case?

[Sendak] Yes, as soon as we learnt of it. However, this appeal is still not examined because the president is again reforming courts and they feel at a loss. I should also note that I still do not properly know what charges exactly were brought against me because the prosecutor's office denies me and my lawyer access to case materials.

[Lyashko] How do your colleagues, council chairmen, respond to what is happening to you?

[Sendak] In private conversations they are supportive of me, but they do not dare to speak up because the same thing may happen to them.

[Lyashko] Thank you for the interview. I wish you the speediest recovery. Stand firm!