An appeal court has shown leniency to Ukraine's former acting defense minister Valeriy Ivaschenko by handing him a suspended sentence because of a statement in which the former official partially pleaded guilty and pointed to the absence of political motives in his case, state prosecutor Petro Koval said.
“He told the court that this case is not political and partially pleaded guilty,” Koval told reporters after declaring the regulatory part of the Appellate Court ruling.
Prosecutors are due to decide whether to appeal against this court verdict after the appellate court reads out the full text of the ruling on August 22, the prosecutor said.
As for the former head of recovery plan for the Feodosia Ship and Mechanical Plant., Serhiy Mikheyev, prosecutors are not going to appeal against this part of the court ruling, Koval said.
The Court of Appeals in Kyiv has replaced the five-year imprisonment for Ukraine’s former acting defense minister Valeriy Ivaschenko with a suspended sentence with a one-year probation period.
The ruling was announced on Tuesday after Ivaschenko’s appeal against Pechersky District Court’s five-year sentence handed down to him, was heard, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.
“To free Ivaschenko from serving the basic punishment with a one-year probation period,” Presiding Judge Olha Yurdyha said when announcing the ruling.
The judge also said that the court ruled to release Serhiy Mikheyev, the former head of recovery plan for the Feodosia Ship and Mechanical Plant.
Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court sentenced Ivaschenko to five years in prison on April 12, 2012, banning him at the same time from occupying government and administrative positions for three years. Ivaschenko’s pretrial detention since August 21, 2010 has been counted toward the prison term set by the court.
Ivaschenko himself and his defense team challenged the sentence.
While serving as an acting defense minister in November 2009, Ivaschenko signed a financial recovery plan for the Feodosia Ship and Mechanical Plant drawn up by a former head of the plant’s financial recovery procedures. The document envisioned the sale of government property, including three berths, a bomb shelter, and a building for the storage of mobilization reserves.
