After approximately five years in Austria,[citation needed] Rudkovskyi had his own company, $100,000, his own house and a modern car, but he decided to sell everything and move back to Ukraine.

In February 1996, he returned to the new Bykov[clarification needed], where he registered a second time at the previous address and obtained a new passport from the Bobrovytsia Raion Police Department as a citizen of Ukraine.

Due to differences with the autonomous government,[clarification needed] he was unable to carry out his plan to exploit oil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The search was carried out on the basis of a “report” that Mykola Rudkovsky “[organized] the production of fake audio and video recordings with the voices of the President of Ukraine and other officials.”[citation needed] On 2 February of that year, Mykola Rudkovsky filed a claim with the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv alleging that the state had disparaged his honor, dignity and business reputation.

[citation needed] Later, on 6 October 2006, Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Volodymyr Lytvyn said when speaking at PACE to European deputies: “...The international examination, which was carried out officially, as far as I know, established that the tapes were edited from September 18 to October 15 [2000], phrases were compressed [therein], and the corresponding words were inserted into the corresponding sentences.” Rudkovsky himself has always categorically denied his involvement in the editing of the “Melnychenko tapes.

On 14 December 2007, the Security Service of Ukraine summoned Mykola Rudkovsky for questioning surrounding the alleged illegal use of Ministry of Transport public funds totaling 390,000 hryvnia during an official trip to Paris on a private charter plane the previous June.

[11] Judge Oleg Bilotserkivets of the Pechersk Court in Kyiv terminated the case on 26 May 2010, at which time the state declared that it was dropping all charges and changing the lead prosecutor.

The court also counted time spent in the pretrial detention facility starting on 28 September 2018 as part of the sentence served, with a daily rate of one and a half days.

The abducted victim was Oleh Valeriyovych Seminskyi, the head of a gas extraction firm at the time and, as of 2019, a deputy of the pro-government Servant of the People Party.

[17] The inquiry found that Seminsky was held captive for over three years, subjected to relentless torture, and forced to pay the crime's mastermind a bogus debt equaling 200 million USD.