KYIV. March 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Former Ukrainian interior minister Yuriy Kravchenko was found dead in a house in the elite Koncha-Zaspe dacha community early on Friday.
Interior Ministry press secretary Inna Kisel quoted Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko as saying that Kravchenko is believed to have committed suicide.
A team of investigators led by Ukrainian Security Service head Oleksandr Turchinov have left for the scene.
Kravchenko, who served as Ukraine's interior minister in 1995-2000, was expected to go to the Prosecutor General's Office on Friday morning for questioning related to the investigation of the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
On a recording said to have been made by Mykola Melnichenko, a former bodyguard of ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Kravchenko allegedly can be heard making comments on Gongadze's disappearance in September 2000. Kravchenko served as interior minister at the time of Gongadze's disappearance. He was later appointed Kherson regional administration chief and headed the State Tax Administration in 2002-2004.
Ukraine's Segodnya newspaper said in an earlier article, referring to sources close to the investigation, that Kravchenko had been under surveillance since December 13, 2004. According to the newspaper, the former minister was banned from leaving Ukraine.
Hryhory Omelchenko, head of the parliamentary commission for high-profile investigations, said in an earlier interview with Interfax that he had asked the Prosecutor General's Office to immediately detain Kravchenko.
Omelchenko said Kravchenko needed to be taken into custody "mainly because keeping him in a Ukrainian Security Service detention center would be a means of keeping Kravchenko alive."
He said he knew "what kind of emotional and psychological condition Kravchenko was in."
"His life is seriously threatened by the danger of a psychological, mental breakdown and suicide, or physical liquidation, or they'll make it look as though he committed suicide, or he'll simply disappear without a trace," he said.