Aleksey Pukach Former head of the main department of criminal search of the department of search and investigative activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Date of Birth: 01.01.1953 Country: Ukraine

1. Biography of Alexey Pukach
2. Allegations of Involvement in the Murder of Georgiy Gongadze
3. Trial and Disappearance
4. Pukach is divorced and is the father of twin daughters.

Biography of Alexey Pukach

Alexey Petrovich Pukach was born on January 1, 1953, in the village of Zhiznyakivtsi in the Belogorsky district of the Khmelnitsky region of the Ukrainian SSR. After his parents' divorce, he lived with his mother in Synitka. He completed school, served in the army, and was involved in sports, achieving the rank of candidate master in sambo. In the late 1970s, he studied at the Donetsk Police School and underwent training in the operational group combating theft of socialist property in the district police department of Donetsk. After receiving his diploma and the rank of lieutenant, he was transferred to Kyiv. Pukach participated in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986 and became a disabled person of the second group, having also suffered a heart attack. It is known that until 2000, Pukach was the head of the external surveillance department of the capital's headquarters and in 2000, he was appointed the chief of the main criminal investigation department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Allegations of Involvement in the Murder of Georgiy Gongadze

According to the official version, Pukach became the main executor of the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. According to the investigation, he organized surveillance of the journalist and led a group of police officers (Valeriy Kostenko, Nikolay Protasov, and Alexander Popovich) who abducted Gongadze on September 16, 2000, and took him to a field near the village of Sukholisy in the Belotserkovsky district of the Kyiv region. According to the investigation's version, Pukach personally strangled the journalist and forced his accomplices to remain silent about the crime. He then possibly reburied the body in the Ulashevskiy Forest of the Tarashchansky district. There were assumptions that Pukach could not act independently without the knowledge of his predecessor as the head of the main criminal investigation department and the head of the office of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Eduard Fere, who has been in a coma since July 2003. In August 2003, Pukach received a new three-room apartment in an elite building in Kyiv. In October 2003, he was arrested by the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine and charged with destroying documents related to the surveillance of Gongadze between May and July 2000. After being released on bail by the Kyiv Appellate Court in November 2003, Pukach disappeared.

Trial and Disappearance

In early March 2005, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced the resolution of the Gongadze case. Pukach, who was declared internationally wanted, was accused in absentia of the journalist's murder. In June of the same year, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Svyatoslav Piskun reported that the police officers accused of Gongadze's murder had confessed to their guilt. However, it was reported that the masterminds behind the murder were not identified. On December 19, 2005, the trial began. Until the summer of 2006, the hearings were closed, but in July 2006, the court sessions became open, and witness questioning began. According to experts, the trial could have lasted several more years.

According to some information, Pukach was in Israel in the summer of 2005. Later, his lawyer Sergey Osyka suggested that his client was deceased. However, in mid-March 2006, a letter allegedly written by Pukach was published, in which he denied all accusations of Gongadze's murder. In June 2006, the Security Service of Ukraine discovered Pukach's passport in the possession of a member of Yulia Tymoshenko's Bloc, and there were reports that Pukach was hiding in the Veliko-Belozersky district of the Zaporizhzhia region, where he was allegedly being carefully concealed by the 7th Department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs (the police intelligence department). In March 2008, the Kyiv Appellate Court handed down a verdict to the three perpetrators of the journalist's murder (none of the defendants fully admitted their guilt). Protasov was sentenced to 13 years in prison, and the other two defendants, Kostenko and Popovich, received 12 years each. All of the convicted were stripped of their officer ranks and the right to hold public positions. Pukach, who, according to the investigation, had been leading the actions of the three police officers, was still wanted internationally at the time of the verdict. The masterminds behind Gongadze's murder were not identified.

Pukach is divorced and is the father of twin daughters.