Former Ukraine interior minister Yuri Kravchenko, linked to the murder of an investigative journalist, apparently committed suicide on Friday, police said. President Viktor Yushchenko has accused the former Ukraine government of covering up the murder in 2000 of reporter Georgiy Gongadze, the most famous criminal case in post-Soviet Ukraine.
The body of Kravchenko was found at his country home outside the capital Kiev. Investigators said a preliminary investigation pointed to suicide.
Kravchenko was interior minister when Gongadze was killed and he had been due to give evidence to prosecutors on Friday.
"If he truly took his own life, it means he was afraid of responsibility for those acts connected with Gongadze's murder," Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko told reporters. "If it is not suicide ... then I believe it was an attempt to conceal information on the murder."
Tymoshenko said scandal-tainted ex-president Leonid Kuchma, abroad on holiday and whom some have accused of being linked to Gongadze's murder, might need to be put under guard to ensure he can testify in the case.
"The question now arises - does Kuchma need to be guarded? If he asks for protection, under Ukraine's laws, he will be provided with it," Tymoshenko said.
The murder of Gongadze, 31, became a turning point in the 10-year term of Kuchma. Gongadze wrote for an Internet journal and was a harsh critic of Kuchma and top businessmen.
Kuchma, who stepped down after Yushchenko's inauguration in January, was linked to the murder by a former bodyguard who fled Ukraine with hundreds of hours of tapes he recorded secretly in his office. In one excerpt, a voice similar to Kuchma's was heard giving an order to "deal with" the reporter.
The former president has always denied any connection with the murder and no conclusive evidence was ever presented. Kuchma is on an extended holiday in the Czech resort of Karlovy Vary and has made no comment on the latest developments.
A statement from Yushchenko's office said the former minister's death proved his new administration was "taking measures related to the murder of Georgiy Gongadze that the previous authorities failed to take for 4 1/2 years."
Yushchenko declared the murder solved this week and said the conduct of the investigation was a matter of "personal honour". Three policemen have been detained and a fourth is being sought.
Ukraine's chief prosecutor this week said Gongadze had been abducted in Kiev by high-ranking officers, suffocated at a site outside the city and his body doused in petrol and set ablaze.
He said the investigation was focusing on establishing which security officials had ordered the murder. Gongadze's body remains unburied, kept in a Kiev mortuary.
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