You're reading: Kuzmin: US lawyers have testimony pointing to Tymoshenko’s involvement in Scherban’s murder

The U.S. Attorney Office has testimony in the case of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko that the murder of Ukrainian lawmaker Yevhen Scherban was paid for by Lazarenko and former prime minister and Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin has said.

"The materials of the U.S. criminal cases against Lazarenko contain interesting information. A witness interrogated by U.S. prosecutors in Lazarenko’s case said that the killer received money for Scherban’s murder from the accounts of Lazarenko and Tymoshenko," Kuzmin said in an interview with the Focus magazine published on the publication’s Web site on Friday.

He noted that the witness referred to a conversation with a person who ordered the assassination, who said: "Yulia will pay" (meaning "pay for the murder").

Meanwhile, when asked by the magazine, whether a new criminal case will be opened in this connection, Kuzmin said: "Again, these materials are in the U.S., as well as the witnesses who gave testimony to the American prosecutors."

Earlier, the press service of the Batkivschyna Party reported that the administration of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych allegedly demand the law-enforcement agencies should charge Tymoshenko of being involved in murders.

"According to information from honest employees of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Prosecutor General’s Office, who are fed up with carrying out illegal the political orders of the authorities, First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin received a cynical order, with reference to the head of state, to charge Yulia Tymoshenko of allegedly being connected to murders and terrorism, in particular, the murders of Vadym Hetman and Yevhen Scherban," reads the party’s statement.

In 1996 MP Yevhen Scherban of the Liberal Party was shot dead by a group of people in Donetsk airport upon his arrival from Moscow.

In 1998 Vadym Hetman, the former National Bank of Ukraine governor, was killed in the elevator of his apartment block in Kyiv.

From November 1995 until January 1997, Tymoshenko headed the United Energy Systems of Ukraine Corporation.

From December 1996 until March 2000, she was member of Ukraine’s parliament.