(Major) Mykola Melnychenko (, born 18 October 1966 in Vasylkiv, Ukrainian SSR) was a bodyguard of Leonid Kuchma (President of Ukraine), an officer of the State Security Administration. Between 1998 and 2000 Melnychenko allegedly recorded numerous conversations that took place in Kuchma's office before fleeing abroad with the secretly taped recordings. The publication of these recordings in 2000 caused a major scandal in Ukraine (known as the Cassette Scandal), which dramatically affected the country's domestic and foreign policy. Melnychenko's principal accusations against Kuchma (supposedly confirmed by the recordings) are the ordering of the kidnapping and murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. The United States government became involved after one of the records revealed the alleged transfer of an advanced Ukrainian radar system Kolchuha to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Hundreds of other allegations are based on the recordings. Biography Mykola Melnychenko was born in the village of Zapadynka, Kyiv Oblast (now outskirt of Vasylkiv) to a family of coal miners moved from the Donbas. He graduated from the Kyiv Military Institute of Control and Signals in Kyiv and became a KGB communications protection expert. In 1992, soon after the collapse of Soviet Union, Melnychenko started his career in Ukraine's State Security Administration (formerly the 9th Directorate of the Committee for State Security (KGB)). Later, he joined President Leonid Kuchma's team of bodyguards and at the time of the scandal, Melnychenko held the rank of Major. His main duty was to protect the President's office against possible eavesdropping. Melnychenko is divorced with one daughter. The 'Cassette Scandal' On November 28, 2000, Ukrainian politician Oleksandr Moroz publicly accused President Kuchma of involvement in the murder of Gongadze, naming Melnychenko as the source of information and playing selected recordings to journalists, starting the 'Cassette Scandal'. Days earlier Melnychenko had fled Ukraine to Ostrava in the Czech Republic, where he left several bags containing dozens of CDs storing thousands of digital recordings. Melnychenko left Ukraine covertly with his family, breaking an official prohibition on leaving the country. Melnychenko claimed that he acted alone when recording the President's conversations and then publishing them abroad. According to Melnychenko, he put an amateur digital dictaphone under a sofa in Kuchma's office and was changing it every time he inspected the room. As the Major states, he was motivated purely by his disillusionment with what he perceived as the extremely corrupt nature of Kuchma's regime and "decided to document evidences of