It was former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko who proposed Second Ukrainian President (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma appointing Viktor Yanukovych as Donetsk region governor in 1997, a co-owner of the Industrial Union of Donbas (ISD) Corporation, Serhiy Taruta, has said.
“Lazarenko nominated him. He convinced Kuchma that Yanukovych should be appointed. If there was some conflict of interests and if he had pretensions to control the region, he would definitely nominate one of his associates, and not Yanukovych. So, there are a lot of discrepancies in all those versions they are talking about today,” Taruta said in an interview with the Ukrainska Pravda publication, when asked who nominated and promoted Yanukovych’s candidacy for the position of governor.
According to Taruta, Yanukovych had nothing in common with ISD at that time.
“Neither Yanukovych, or people and structures affiliated to him were either shareholders, or even business partners of ISD. Moreover, I acquainted with Yanukovych when he had become deputy governor for industrial issues under [then Governor of Donetsk region Serhiy] Poliakov [in 1996]. I regularly contacted [then Deputy Governor of Donetsk region Vitaliy] Haiduk or Yanukovych on the issues related to my activities,” he said.
Taruta also told the publication that Ukrainian parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban did not own the ISD Corporation or its assets.
As reported, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine suspects that former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko could be involved in the organization of the murder of Scherban in 1996.
“The ISD at that time had only obligations. It had no assets, no privatized property, no acquisitions via bankruptcy at that time,” Taruta said.
At the same time, he noted that the ISD obtained its first assets in late 1998-1999.
“So, today they are talking about a fight for assets, and this is not true. At that moment the ISD was just a mechanism for settlements and for improvement of enterprises’ activities,” he said.
Taruta also said that he blames Third Ukrainian President (2005-2010) Viktor Yuschenko “for all problems with Russia’s Gazprom.”
“I’ve said earlier and I am saying now that he is responsible for replacing long-term relations by the so-called market relations that indeed had not much in common with real market relations,” Taruta said.
“It was Yuschenko who introduced the price formula and I think he concluded an absolutely unprofitable gas deal in 2006. Tymoshenko’s contract was just a consequence,” he said.
