Kharkiv – The defense counsel for former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko will ask court on Tuesday to close the criminal case on financial abuses within the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) corporation.
“The first motion that the defense team will make tomorrow will be a request to close the criminal case,” the ex-premier’s defense lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, said at a briefing on Monday.
In his view, the court has every reason to consider and grant this motion at this stage of the trial.
The court hearing of the case against Tymoshenko concerning financial abuse within the UESU will take place on December 18.
Tymoshenko faces five charges in the case – organizing the appropriation of public funds of an especially large amount in 1997-1998 via illicitly receiving value added tax (VAT) (Part 3 of Article 27, Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), attempting to appropriate public funds of an especially large amount in 1997-1998 via illicitly receiving VAT (Part 3 of Article 27, Part 2 of Article 15, Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code), tax evasion by the UESU Corporation (Part 3 of Article 27, Part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code), the non-payment of income tax (Part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code), and committing a crime via official forgery (Part 3 of Article 27, Part 2 of Article 366 of the Criminal Code).
A preliminary hearing of the case was held on April 19, 2012 in the absence of Tymoshenko. Since then the court has been putting off hearings due to the fact that Tymoshenko kept refusing to attend the hearings due to her state of health.
On October 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office in signing gas contracts with Russia in 2009. She has served her sentence in Kachanivska Penal Colony in Kharkiv since late December 2011.
On May 9, 2012, Tymoshenko was transferred to Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 in Kharkiv to undergo a course of treatment.
