Above: Kateryna Gandziuk Credit: Slidstvo.info

On the morning of July 31, 2018, Ukrainian activist Kateryna Gandziuk, a strident critic of corrupt local elites in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, had just left her apartment building to go to work when a man approached and poured a liter of sulfuric acid over her, burning and disfiguring much of her body.

Three months and 14 operations later, Gandziuk succumbed to her injuries.

Even in a country long inured to corruption, Gandziuk’s murder sparked outrage. She was one of nine activists to be attacked — and the third to be killed — in the country in 2018.

Law enforcement officials responded to the assault by arresting six people; a senior local official is suspected of organizing the murder. One further suspect has fled and is wanted by the authorities.

But those arrests have not satisfied Gandziuk’s friends and activist colleagues, who formed a movement called “Who ordered the killing of Katya Gandziuk?” after the attack. The group believes that she had a far longer list of enemies, and that those who attacked her had the protection of the country’s law enforcement.

Credit: Hromadske Kateryna Gandziuk in the hospital shortly before her death.

An investigative documentary released on March 25 by Slidstvo.info, OCCRP’s Ukrainian member center, also raises troubling questions about the investigation into the attack.

(Watch the documentary with English subtitles.)

Phone records obtained by reporters show that one of the key suspects, who allegedly handled payments for the assault on Gandziuk, was in frequent contact with more than a dozen police officers, prosecutors, and employees of the SBU, the country’s security service, both before and after the attack.

This raises the question of whether officials knew of the attack on Gandziuk before it happened and whether the investigation has been compromised.

Making Enemies

At 33, Gandziuk had made plenty of enemies in Kherson, her hometown, where she had served since 2016 as an advisor to its mayor, Volodymyr Mykolayenko. Unusually for a public servant, she was also a prominent activist, taking on diverse causes such as promoting youth sport and countering Russian propaganda.

What she was most known for, however, were her biting critiques of corruption and abuse by local officials, which she frequently published on her Facebook page.

Shortly before the attack, for example, Gandziuk trained her sights on what she alleged was corruption in the local forestry sector. On her Facebook page, she critiqued the use of illegal tree cuttings following intentionally set forest fires.

She also helped produce а short film published online that accused Vladyslav Manger, the head of Kherson’s regional council, of political corruption and conducting semi-criminal businesses. Manger attempted to sue those involved in the film’s production in response, but was defeated in the Supreme Court in June 2018.

In an interview with OCCRP in her hospital bed less than three weeks before her death, Gandziuk said she believed Manger harbored a grudge against her.

“I think the most sensitive thing was that Vladyslav Manger lost at the Supreme Court, where the facts we presented in the program we filmed a year ago were recognized as true. It really touched him in the raw,” Gandziuk said. She said Manger could possibly be behind the attack, and also that someone in his “criminal environment” could have carried it out as a “gift” for him. She expressed pessimism that police would get to the bottom of the case.

“I don’t trust the official investigation, [or] that they will be officially brought to justice,” Gandziuk told OCCRP.

Credit: Slidstvo.info Vladyslav Manger

Speaking to reporters in November, shortly after Gandziuk’s death, Manger rejected the allegations made in her video story. “Ninety-nine percent of the movie is false,” he said.

Reporters shared a recording of part of their interview with Gandziuk and asked Manger why she would have accused him. His first reply was to say that he would have liked to ask her the same thing. Pressed on the issue again, Manger said only that he “didn’t have a personal conflict with her.”

He also rejected her accusations that someone may have attacked her as a “gift” for him. “What ‘gift’?,” he said, repeating that he didn’t have a conflict with her.

Manger was detained in February as a key suspect in Gandziuk’s murder, and is now awaiting trial on a 2.5 million hryvnia (US$92,000) bail. Prosecutors have alleged that he organized the attack in retribution for the activist’s forestry allegations. He said he is being targeted for political reasons.

However, activists say his detention has left important questions unanswered.