Three more criminal cases are investigated against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, apart from the case on the murder of parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban in 1996, First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin has said.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating into the cases on
ambulance cars and Kyoto funds. Tymoshenko’s defense lawyers are still
reading the materials of the case, and they are doing this very slowly.
There is another case on an attempt to bribe judges of the Supreme
Court. There is one more case on infliction of body injuries to an
employee of the State Penitentiary Service during disturbances at the
Lukyanivske pre-trial detention facility, when Tymoshenko with her
associates came there and demanded to release her husband. We have
evidence that the injuries were caused personally by Tymoshenko,” Kuzmin
said in an interview with the Segodnya daily newspaper.
Asked whether investigators have evidence that Tymoshenko was aware
that she was transferring $2.8 million for the murder of Scherban and
why the money were transferred only half a year after the murder, Kuzmin
said: “Yes, we have such evidence.”
“Speaking about a delay in payment, the answer is simple – both
[former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo] Lazarenko and Tymoshenko used to
do business in such a way, they don’t pay when their order is
fulfilled… And when Tymoshenko started receiving unambiguous threats she
transferred the money,” Kuzmin said.
As reported, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said at a
briefing on January 18, 2013 that the Prosecutor General’s Office had
finished its investigation into the criminal case on the murder of MP
Yevhen Scherban, who was shot dead in 1996, and that former Ukrainian
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had been notified of being suspected of
having organized the crime, along with former Prime Minister Pavlo
Lazarenko.
Pshonka also announced that the criminal case on the murder of
Scherban and the criminal case on the embezzlement of public funds to
repay debts of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) Corporation
to the Russian Defense Ministry were united in one case.
On October 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced
Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for overstepping her authority when
signing 2009 gas contracts with Russia. She has served her sentence in
Kachanivska Penal Colony in Kharkiv since late December 2011. Currently
the ex-premier is undergoing treatment at a Kharkiv-based hospital.
