Corpse May Be Missing Journalist

KIEV, Ukraine — A decapitated, decaying corpse at the center of a political scandal enveloping Ukraine’s leadership is probably that of a missing journalist, the country’s top prosecutor said Wednesday.

General Prosecutor Mikhailo O. Potebenko has been accused of dragging his heels in investigating the disappearance in September of reporter Georgi Gongadze.

Confirmation that the corpse is Gongadze would bolster his supporters’ fears that the journalist was slain, but Potebenko qualified his statement, based on DNA tests, by saying the reporter might nonetheless still be alive.

Gongadze’s disappearance has raised fears over press freedom and corruption in the ex-Soviet country.

He ran a news Web site that was often critical of Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma and powerful businessmen. Opposition politicians have accused Kuchma of involvement in Gongadze’s disappearance.

Kuchma has denied any role and dismissed as fakes tape recordings by a former security service officer purporting to document the president talking about sidelining Gongadze.

“There is a great likelihood that the corpse is Gongadze’s . . . but I give no guarantee,” Potebenko told a news conference.

He earlier told parliament that DNA tests had shown that there was a 99.6% chance it was Gongadze, based on comparisons with the DNA of the reporter’s mother.

But Potebenko cast doubt on the authenticity of the audiotapes, quoting experts as saying that they showed signs of editing and that poor sound quality made it impossible to prove the voices on the tapes were those of Kuchma and his aides.

The Gongadze case has become a major political scandal, with street traders doing a brisk business in copies of the tapes, which are strewn with expletives and references to other politicians.

Mykola Melnichenko, the former secret service officer who said he made them by placing a recording device in Kuchma’s office, has gone into hiding somewhere in Europe. Kuchma last week issued a writ for libel against him.

Ukraine is ranked among the world’s most corrupt countries by the anti-graft group Transparency International.