You're reading: Getting Yulia

The accusations against imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are flying faster than the facts.

Hiring hitmen to kill a Donetsk lawmaker and businessman in 1996. Embezzling millions in state funds. Spending millions kept in offshore accounts on luxurious fur and jewelry.

These were the sensational accusations reeled off by Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin against jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko during a Friday evening television appearance on Oct. 28.

Since President Viktor Yanukovych rejected Western demands to release his main political rival on Oct. 17, new accusations have been piled on. She was imprisoned for seven years for abuse of office, in a case seen in Western capitals as politically motivated.

Now, the authorities are digging in their heels against pressure from the United States and the European Union, announcing a slew of new investigations. Analysts say Yanukovych wants to finish off his longtime rival once and for all, destroying her support at home and abroad by muddying her reputation.

In an interview with several foreign newspapers on Oct. 17, Yanukovych talked up new charges against Tymoshenko, citing them as a reason he could not free her.

The man apparently charged with the task of taking out the fiery former businesswoman is Kuzmin, a plain-speaking 44-year-old veteran prosecutor who has been working in the prosecutor’s office for more than 20 years.

“It seems Kuzmin has a mission to get Yulia,” said a former prosecutor who worked with Kuzmin in the past, speaking on condition of anonymity. The former prosecutor said Kuzmin was acting on instructions sent “from above,” referring to Yanukovych.

Yulia Tymoshenko and Pavlo Lazarenko, both former prime ministers of Ukraine, in a 1997 photo. Both did business together in the 1990s and both are in prison, Tymoshenko in Ukraine and Lazarenko in America. (UNIAN)

Two days after Tymoshenko was sentenced to jail, the Security Service of Ukraine, known by its SBU acronym, launched a new criminal case against her. The SBU accused her of attempting to embezzle $405 million in government money back in mid 1990s when she controlled energy giant United Energy Systems of Ukraine.

Then, on Oct. 24, prosecutors announced they were reviving an old investigation, accusing her of embezzling $3 million and evading $2.5 million in taxes when she headed the company.

Tymoshenko is under investigation by prosecutors in two other abuse-of-office cases related to her second stint as prime minister from 2007 to 2010. She denies all charges against her.

The main goal of piling on the cases against Tymoshenko is to discredit her in the West and to convince the West not to defend her.

– Volodymyr Fesenko, political analyst.

But the most sensational accusation came on Oct. 28, when Kuzmin spoke for more than an hour on the Big Politics talk-show on Inter, a leading television channel owned by SBU chief Valeriy Khoroshkovsky.

He revealed that prosecutors are checking claims by a witness, apparently made to U.S. prosecutors during a separate investigation, that Tymoshenko was involved in ordering and paying for the killing of lawmaker and businessman Yevhen Shcherban at Donetsk airport in 1996.

Kuzmin claimed to have the transcript of the questioning of a witness in the case of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who is currently serving a sentence in a California jail for money laundering and other crimes.

Speaking in a gruff monotone, the prosecutor alleged that the witness said Tymoshenko and Lazarenko had ordered and paid for the hit on Shcherban, and that prosecutors were checking the claim.

A spokeswoman for Tymoshenko called the allegation “rubbish.”

Kuzmin went on to detail what he called further wrongdoing by Tymoshenko, accusing her of a 2003 attack on a pre-trial detention center in Chernihiv where her father-in-law was being held at the time. He also repeated earlier claims that she owned a number of offshore accounts and was spending millions for personal needs back in 1990s.

“The main goal of piling on the cases against Tymoshenko is to discredit her in the West and to convince the West not to defend her,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst. “That is why Kuzmin will be trying to tie her to the criminal cases of Lazarenko” for which he was convicted in a U.S. court, he added.

Kuzmin is a man on a mission. During the show, he said that last year he went all the way to the U.S. where for two days he questioned Lazarenko. He gave few details, but noted that it was done in relation to the investigations regarding Tymoshenko, who was Lazarenko’s political ally in the 1990s.

It seems Kuzmin has a mission to get Yulia.

– Former prosecutor who worked with Kuzmin in the past

The prosecutor said that his American colleagues established the collusion of Lazarenko and Tymoshenko in embezzling government money, citing an indictment from 2000 by the U.S. prosecutors.

However, the part of the quoted indictment which mentioned Tymoshenko and her former energy company was later not even considered by the U.S. court during the Lazarenko trial and, therefore, never presented to the jury for the final verdict.

“In order to verify this [information], we need to question Petro Kirichenko (a.k.a. Kiritchenko),” Kuzmin said in an interview with the LigaBusinessInform website on Oct. 31. Kirichenko is a former Lazarenko associate who gave evidence against him in the U.S., where he now resides.

According to U.S. legislation, in order to question Kirichenko, or anyone else in the U.S., Ukrainian prosecutors need to get their consent, Kuzmin said.
They could have found a way to get it.

On Sept. 2 Kirichenko’s wife Isabella was arrested in Kyiv and charged with attempted document fraud in trying to sell her husband’s apartments in Kyiv. The apartments have been under arrest since the 1990s when criminal investigation was launched against her husband. She denied the charge, which alleges she falsified a document declaring the arrest of the apartment lifted.

Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party issued a statement on Nov.1 saying that Ukrainian prosecutors are trying to use Isabella Kirichenko to convince her husband to testify against Tymoshenko. Sources close to the Kirichenkos confirmed this allegation.

Kuzmin denies exerting any pressure in the Kirichenkos. Ukrainian lawyers for Isabella Kirichenko refused to comment on the issue and Petro Kirichenko could not be reached for comment.

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Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].