You're reading: Ivaschenko says judges committed fraud

Ukraine's acting defense minister Valeriy Ivaschenko has said the five-year sentence handed down to him had been falsified.

“Pechersky Court in Kyiv had simply falsified the sentence and it copied pages two to ten from the indictment word-for-word with the same spelling mistakes,” Ivaschenko told a court of appeals in Kyiv, according to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent.

Both the verdict and the indictment say, according to Ivaschenko, that he was acting defense minister until May 26 2010, while in fact he held this post until March 10 2010, when a new minister was appointed.

The verdict, like the indictment misspelled some names and also copied the evidence provided by several witnesses word for word, even though they were actually opposite.

“It is a fraud, committed by judges Serhiy Vovk, Oksana Tsarevych and Volodymyr Karavan, punishable under Article 366 of the Criminal Code, all of which suggests that the sentence was unlawful,” he said.

Ivaschenko also said that his case was “ordered” and it had no political content, and is the dismissed Defense Ministry officials’ revenge.

Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Ivaschenko on April 12, 2012, to five years in prison and to a three-year disqualification as a civil servant. In line with Article 82 of the Criminal Code, his preliminary detention from August 21, 2010, was taken into account. Ivaschenko and his defense lawyers disagree with the sentence.

In November 2009, Ivaschenko, then acting defense minister, signed a financial recovery plan, proposed by the outside manager of the Feodosia Shipyard, which envisioned the sale of state properties, including three piers, a bomb shelter and a building that was used to store mobilization reserves.