Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has not changed her position regarding her contacts with investigators and is not going to talk with them, says her defender Serhiy Vlasenko.
“Her position has not changed so far,” Vlasenko said when asked by Interfax whether Tymoshenko would answer the investigation’s questions regarding the killing of parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban.
Vlasenko said he had not received any writs from the Prosecutor General’s Office on conducting investigative procedures over the past week.
“The last time I received a writ was on [January] 22 – that’s when they broke in without warning during my confidential meeting with Yulia Volodymyrivna [Tymoshenko]. They missed the deadlines in presenting this writ to me. The Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that they were supposed to do this 3 days before an investigative procedure was to be conducted,” Vlasenko said.
“However, as I was to go to PACE, I notified them that I could not be present. […] After that, I did not received any writs from anyone, and nobody informed me of anything, even though I was at work, at the Verkhovna Rada and other well-known public places,” Vlasenko said.
He said he was shocked to learn that investigators were planning investigative procedures after Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said the pretrial investigation had been completed.
“What investigative procedures can be conducted if the investigation is over, as Pshonka said on January 18? They should answer first whether the investigation has been completed or not, and then we will make some decisions,” he said.
It was reported earlier that Vlasenko made public Tymoshenko’s open letter to President Viktor Yanukovych on January 8, in which she announced the start of a personal civil disobedience campaign, including her refusal to talk with investigators and prosecutors.
Pshonka announced on January 18, 2013, that the Prosecutor General’s Office had completed an investigation into Scherban’s murder and notified Tymoshenko that she was suspected, along with former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, of organizing the parliamentarian’s killing for mercenary reasons. Pshonka said also that the case concerning Scherban’s murder had been combined with the case on the embezzlement of budget money for settling the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine’s (UESU) debts to the Russian Defense Ministry.
