The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has no evidence of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko being involved in espionage in the context of the 2009 contract signing with Russia, nor does it have any such data with regard to the inquiry involving the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) Corporation, said Renat Kuzmin, Ukraine's First Deputy Prosecutor General.
“The SBU (the Security Service of Ukraine) probed both this [gas]
case and yet another one concerning UESU’s $405-million debt to the
Russian Defense Ministry. The SBU has not found any evidence of
espionage. Tymoshenko was charged with stealing this money. Espionage is
different: it is a state crime that is absolutely unlike embezzlement. A
spy’s modus operandi is substantially different from that of a thief.
We have no evidence of Tymoshenko having committed espionage. The SBU
might have this data but I have nothing to do with it,” he said in an
interview published in the Monday issue of the Kommersant Ukraine
newspaper.
Asked whether Tymoshenko could have been blackmailed by Vladimir
Putin into signing the gas contract, whether he might have set a
pre-election condition for Tymoshenko: sign a disadvantageous contract
or the debt inquiry closed earlier would reopen, Kuzmin said: “This is a
quite feasible scenario. Whether or not the case was closed lawfully is
a matter for the Russian prosecutors. We have our own opinion on that
matter but we believe the case was closed on the ground of an expired
statute of limitations.”
Tymoshenko was not arrested as part of that inquiry but “the Russian
Prosecutor General’s Office still has a Moscow court order for
Tymoshenko’s arrest which could be enforced at any moment,” he recalled.
To enforce the warrant for Tymoshenko’s arrest, “overturning the decision to drop the case was enough,” the first deputy prosecutor said.
“This would mean that while Tymoshenko was holding talks at the Gazprom office, the Russian prosecutor could have ruled to overturn the decision to drop the case and then she would have been classified as an accused with a genuine arrest warrant. The ex-prime minister would have headed not to Ukraine for the New Year, but to a Moscow jail. And such a prospect was quite feasible,” Kuzmin said.
“One case, in which she is charged with tax evasion, appropriation of public assets, public money through fraud, is currently heard by a Kharkiv court. Prosecutors are still investigating the murder of parliamentarian Scherban, the attempted bribing of Supreme Court members, the inflicting of injuries to jail staff, and the case against Pavlo Lazarenko, in which Tymoshenko is classified as one of his accomplices,” the prosecution official said.
On October 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years of imprisonment for overstepping her authority in signing 2009 gas contracts with Russia. Tymoshenko is serving her sentence at the Kachanivska prison in Kharkiv.
In the UESU case, Tymoshenko is charged with organizing the appropriation of, and attempted appropriation of public funds through abuse of office and forgery, organizing the UESU tax evasion, which led to the actual non-receipt of funds to the national budget, and individual income tax evasion resulting in grave consequences.
The case is heard by Kyivsky District Court in Kharkiv. The next hearing is set for June 25.
