The Ukrainian Pechersk District Court dropped charges on Wednesday against former President Leonid Kuchma, who is accused of giving orders to kill opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000.
The main evidence of the ex-president’s guilt was a tape recording, made by Mykola Melnychenko, a former security officer who claims to have secretly recorded conversations allegedly featuring Kuchma giving the order "to take care of" the journalist.
Kuchma, who ruled Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, categorically denied involvement in the murder.
In July the Ukrainian security service (SBU) asked the Constitutional Court to withdraw Melnychenko's testimony since the evidence was gathered illegally.
“Mykola Melnychenko’s tapes were illegally recorded and can not be seen as proof of Kuchma’s guilt,” the judge Galina Suprun said on Wednesday at the trial.
In March, Ukraine's state prosecutor opened a criminal case against Kuchma for his suspected role in the murder of Gongadze, whose headless body was found in a forest outside Kiev in September 2000.
