Kyiv Court of Appeals has upheld the ruling of Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky District Court to release former officer of the State Guard Department Mykola Melnychenko on bail of Hr 76,500, and impose travel restrictions on him.
A panel of judges of the Appeal Court of Kyiv passed this ruling on Tuesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.
Thus the court dismissed an appeal by Melnychenko’s lawyer Mykola Nedilko against the selection of a measure of restraint for his client.
In November 2000, a scandal broke in Ukraine after the parliament announced there were audio recordings allegedly made by Melnychenko in the office of then President Leonid Kuchma. Melnychenko was charged with divulging state secrets, exceeding his powers and using forged documents.
In September 2011, Melnychenko was put on the wanted list. A court in Kyiv ordered that he be remanded in custody, as Melnychenko had skipped bail and absconded.
Melnychenko was arrested in Italy on August 3. On August 14, an appellate court in Naples decided to release him.
On September 14, 2012 Melnychenko told a briefing in the United States that, on sensational audio tapes published by him, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko was named as the person who had commissioned the murder of businessman Yevhen Scherban, and that Petro Kyrychenko, a business partner of Lazarenko, and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, had paid for the crime.
Melnychenko was detained at Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport on October 24, where he had arrived on a flight from New York.
On October 26, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky District Court released him on bail of Hr 76,500, which is around $9,600, and oblige him to report a change of residence to the investigator. On the same day, Melnychenko’s defense lawyer, Mykola Nedilko, said: “We will appeal against this ruling, as we asked to put a travel ban on him. This is the optimal measure of restraint. We did not ask for a bail, because releasing a person on bail who returned voluntarily would not be a correct ruling.”
