You're reading: Lazarenko denies involvement in murders of Scherban and Hetman

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko has said that he had nothing to do with the murders of Ukrainian MP Yevhen Scherban and banker Vadym Hetman.

"I, Pavlo Ivanovych Lazarenko, have repeatedly stated and state that I have nothing to do with the contract murders of Scherban and Hetman, which they have long been trying to pin on me in Ukraine. All these accusations are baseless and are another attempt to discredit me," Lazarenko said in a statement.

The ex-premier’s statement, dated Dec. 11, was made public on Monday by his defense lawyer Maryna Dolhopola.

Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party’s executive committee and a parliamentarian, was gunned down while disembarking from a plane at the Donetsk airport on Nov. 4, 1996.

Vadym Hetman, the former National Bank of Ukraine governor, was killed in the elevator of his apartment block in Kyiv in 1998.

Lazarenko was charged in the United States with laundering money obtained illegally and transferred to foreign bank accounts in 1994-1999. In August 2006, he was sentenced by a court in California to nine years in prison for money laundering and other crimes. He is under house arrest at his apartment in San Francisco.

In June 2011, Lazarenko’s custody period was reduced by seven months until Jan. 11, 2012.

Lazarenko led the Ukrainian government from June 1996 to June 1997.

In Nov. 2011, Ukrainian First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said that men who shot Ukrainian parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban in 1996 received the payment for this contract killing from firms controlled at the time by then Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and then head of United Energy System of Ukraine (UESU) Yulia Tymoshenko.