You're reading: Prosecutors try to pin 1996 murder of lawmaker on Tymoshenko

 Amid rising speculation that she is in ill health and is not being allowed to properly consult with her lawyers, imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko learned on Jan. 18 that prosecutors suspect her of involvement in the 1996 gangland-style assassination of Donetsk member of parliament Yevhen Shcherban.

If
convicted, Tymoshenko faces life in prison, in addition to the seven
years she has been serving since 2011 for signing a gas deal with
Russia. Her supporters say the accusations are a continuation of
President Viktor Yanukovych’s attempts to destroy his nemesis and
ensure that she can never become his political rival again.

In
a video released by the General
Prosecutor’s Office
on Jan. 20, a thin and shaky-looking Tymoshenko signs
a paper presented by an unnamed representative of the penitentiary
system. It listed three articles of the
criminal code
that she is suspected of violating.

The
authorities’ latest gambit involving Tymoshenko has a lot of
implications for Ukraine, most of them bad. The charges would be
greeted less skeptically if Ukraine had a credible judicial system.
Instead, it has one of the world’s most corrupt judiciaries.

The
initial reaction in the Western world seems to be that the murder
charges amount to more political persecution of Tymoshenko.

Unless
prosecutors can convince the world otherwise, Ukraine’s leaders are
likely to face more isolation in the West. The chances of
signing an Association Agreement with the European Union this
year could be reduced and talks could be frozen with the
International Monetary Fund over billions of
dollars in additional credit that the nation needs.

The
charges are also likely to fuel a movement in the West for sanctions
targeted against officials who
are involved in the alleged political
persecution and human rights violations

In
any case, the first reaction of the diplomatic community in Kyiv was
one of shock and disbelief that Ukraine’s authorities decided to
proceed with an old case despite numerous warnings to Yanukovych of
the dire consequences for continuing what many in the West see as the
hounding of Tymoshenko.

Serving
papers

Nevertheless,
on the morning of Jan. 18, representatives of the General
Prosecutor’s Office
made the first attempt to serve a notice to Tymoshenko in the
hospital in Kharkiv where she is being treated.
The hospital’s chief doctor prevented
them from proceeding with any formalities because of his
patient’s poor health, said
Hryhoriy Nemyria, a prominent member of the opposition and
Tymoshenko’s long-time ally.

Tymoshenko
is suffering from spinal hernia, a painful back condition, and is
undergoing treatment. Her health recently deteriorated, partially due
to a hunger strike which she staged
last year to protest what she alleged was
an unfair Oct. 28 parliamentary election. Serhiy Vlasenko,
Tymoshenko’s lawyer and member of parliament, said on Jan. 18 that her health was so bad that
he “thought she was dead” when he found her in the shower room on
the same day. He said she could not recognize him for two minutes.

She
has had limited contact with her defenders, including her daughter.
The State Penitentiary Service released statements on Jan. 21 and 22,
saying that Tymoshenko is refusing to see them.

From
a  video
recorded by the prosecutors
 
on
Jan. 18, Tymoshenko’s
health problems are evident. She is
looking pale and frail, but is
sitting up and talking to the person who came to serve her a notice
that she is a murder
suspect.
“Why are you doing it without a defender?” Tymoshenko is heard
asking. The other person does not answer her question, but hands her
a paper and asks her to sign a slip.

The latest images of Yulia Tymoshenko from a video filmed on Jan. 18 and released on Jan. 20. She is looking thin, frail and passive in this video.

According
to the new criminal procedural
code, informing a suspect about their
status is no longer qualified as a part of an
investigation, and therefore can be done without a defender. “It’s
sad to say so, but the law enforcers did not violate her right [for
defense],” said one Kyiv lawyer.

Such
a notice is served once the preliminary investigation is over.
Now, the prosecutors will start an official trial investigation, and
will ask Tymoshenko to take part in it, which she has the right to
refuse, according to the new code. After
that, an indictment will be served and Tymoshenko and
her defenders will be allowed to study all of the materials in
the case. After this, the case will be ready to go to court.

Representatives
of the General Prosecutor’s Office
have gone out of their way in recent days to
explain that the case is not political. Pshonka, the nation’s chief
prosecutor, talked to the press on Jan. 18 and called in a
dozen ambassadors on Jan. 20 to explain the case and procedure.

Many
representatives of the diplomatic community who talked to the Kyiv
Post said that Western governments are unlikely to go into the
details of the case because the charges are regarded as persecution
of a political opponent.

The
Jan. 20 meeting between ambassadors and the chief prosecutor was mostly
interpreted as “preventative” before a meeting of
diplomats with member of parliament Arseniy
Yatseniuk, who co-chairs United Opposition Batkivshchyna along
with Tymoshenko, as well as Namyria and Vlasenko, scheduled
a day later.

Yatseniuk
said that the opposition will initiate a
parliamentary hearing on Jan. 30 to dismiss
Pshonka and a number of other top officials. “I can only add that
if there is a more idiotic case than the gas case (for which Tymoshenko was imprisoned), they have cooked
it up,” Yatseniuk told the
Kyiv Post.

Seventeen-year-old
case

Tymoshenko’s
third case combines new allegations of commissioning a murder with
old charges of corruption and abuse of power related to her business
activities in the 1990s, when she was known to the world as “the
Gas Princess” because she was a prominent and privileged trader of
natural gas.

Central
in this case is Shcherban, a prominent businessman and
parliament member from Donetsk, who was
gunned down by masked men who stormed the airport
runway in Donetsk on Nov. 3, 1996 as
the victim left the plane. His wife and two plane
crew members also died, while a customs inspector was wounded
in this shooting that is often described by the Western
media as “Mafia-style.”

In
his statement to the media, Pshonka said that investigators found
that Tymoshenko and Shcherban had “a conflict of business
interests,” which was related to the supply of natural
gas and its price. At the time, Tymoshenko headed United
Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU), a gas trading company whose
operations covered a third of Ukraine’s territory.

Pshonka
said Tymoshenko and former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko had a
“joint criminal intention,” and agreed that Lazarenko was to find
the murderers, while Tymoshenko was to pay for the murder. He claims
Tymoshenko paid $2.329 million off her accounts, while Lazarenko paid
another half a million in cash.

The
business activity of Tymoshenko’s company UESU is a matter of a
second criminal case, which is yet to go on trial. In that
case, Tymoshenko is accused of causing financial damage to the
country by shifting the company’s debt to the budget under a
guarantee signed by Lazarenko. A Kyiv city court ruled recently that
Ukraine had to pay UESU’s debt to the Russian Federation, and Hr 15
million has been paid so far.

The
criminal case that tied Shcherban’s murder to Lazarenko was started
in 2000. Lazarenko featured as the
main suspect who commissioned the murder. In 2003, Vadym Blotskikh,
one of the three gunmen
who took part in the murder, was jailed for
life. Two of his accomplices, as well as many of the key witnesses in
the case, have since died under
mysterious circumstances.

Until
then, Tymoshenko’s name only came up once in the case, according to
the Ukrainian media. Petro Kirichenko, a top aide to Lazarenko, told
a court in San Francisco in 2001 that some of the money used to pay
for the murder came from Tymoshenko’s companies.

Mustafa
Nayyem, a prominent journalist who investigated the case, posted a
comment on his Twitter, saying that only $14 million of an
estimated $80 to $90 million
which was on the account at the time of the transfer, came
from Tymoshenko’s companies, though.

How
the case was handled

“There
was no Tymoshenko in this case until a year ago,” says Vlasenko,
her lawyer.

Ukraine’s prosecutors started talking about Tymoshenko’s
involvement in the Shcherban
murder case after her jailing in 2011 for
allegedly abusing her role as prime minister in reaching the 2009 gas
deal with Russia.

Various
members of the opposition fear that Tymoshenko’s third case was
pulled out now because of the government’s fear of the rulings
expected from the European Court on Human Rights. The first court
ruling is expected to be favorable to Tymoshenko, and the new
accusations were rolled out against her as a preemptive
measure,Yatseniuk said on Jan. 18.

But
prosecutors maintain the case is genuine.

Rinat
Kuzmin, first deputy prosecutor general, even wrote letters to the
U.S. Senate
and to President Barack Obama last year, complaining that
U.S. authorities are stalling his investigation by not allowing him
to question Lazarenko, a key witness in the case, in a U.S. jail,
where he served a sentence for money laundering until November.
Kirichenko, the other key witness, also lives in the United
States
It was Kuzmin’s trip to the U.S. in July last year to talk to
Kirichenko that cost him a five-year tourist visa, which was revoked
in November.

Many
domestic and foreign observers then said that Kuzmin is trying to
cook up a case against Tymoshenko where there is none, and that the
only way to prove her guilt would be to get Lazarenko’s own
testimony, which would implicate himself as well.

Vlasenko,
Tymoshenko’s lawyer, said that the case has no substance and is
aimed at destroying Tymoshenko.
“Yanukovych, ahead of the presidential election, does not need
Tymoshenko alive,” he said.

But
Pshonka denied allegations of any political motive.

“There
is no political subtext, there are just the materials of
investigation and the arguments of the defense, after studying which
the court will take a corresponding decision in the case,” his
press service quoted him as saying to Western
diplomats.

Kyiv
Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at
[email protected].