Former Interior Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko did not want to please Third Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko in the case on his poisoning by prolonging the surveillance of Volodymyr Satsiuk, former driver of a former deputy chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), former Deputy Interior Minister Petro Koliada, who is a witness in the case, has said.
“One should not claim that Lutsenko prolonged the term of the surveillance to please Yuschenko, as everybody know that he had strained relations with the president [Yuschenko] at that time,” Koliada said during an interrogation at Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court.
Koliada also expressed confidence that Yuschenko was not even poisoned.
“I still think that the case on the poisoning was opened illegally. It’s my personal opinion,” he said.
On February 27, 2012, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv found Lutsenko guilty of committing official crimes and sentenced him to four years in prison, with confiscation of his property.
The essence of the charges lies in the fact that Lutsenko, while serving as interior minister, allegedly facilitated the accrual of an illegal pension to his driver, Leonid Prystupliuk, the allocation of housing to him, as well as his inclusion in the operational services department.
The other charges concern the extension of an investigative case concerning the driver of former SBU First Deputy Chief Volodymyr Satsiuk, as part of an investigation into the poisoning of then presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko.
Lutsenko was detained on December 26, 2010.
