Wife of ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko's ally talks about her interrogation.
A U.S. citizen jailed in Kyiv last year said she was used as a “bargaining chip” by prosecutors who have separately admitted their desire to question her husband over ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s alleged involvement in a 1996 murder and financial crimes.
The revelations by Isabella Kiritchenko, who emigrated to America from Ukraine 22 years ago, threaten to undermine the credibility of the numerous ongoing criminal probes against Tymoshenko.
Isabella Kiritchenko was detained on Sept. 2 and held for more than two months in connection with a real estate transaction in Ukraine.
She said investigators appeared more interested in talking to her husband, Petro Kiritchenko, a former business associate of ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, with her arrest becoming a way to get to him.
Prosecutors have said Petro Kiritchenko could have crucial evidence linking Tymoshenko and Lazarenko to the murder of wealthy lawmaker Yevhen Shcherban and other crimes.
Petro Kiritchenko with his wife Isabella
Lazarenko, a former political ally of Tymoshenko, is currently imprisoned in America after being convicted of money laundering and fraud during his graft-filled term as prime minister from 1996-1997.
The 59-year-old Lazarenko is scheduled to be released from the federal prison in Terminal Island, California, on Nov. 1.
“From the very first minutes of my detention, investigators at the prosecutor’s office started asking me about my husband, because he knows Lazarenko and Tymoshenko, and [saying] that he has to answer some 400 or 600 questions,” Isabella Kiritchenko said by telephone from her home in San Francisco in her first interview since she was released by Ukrainian authorities in November.
Prosecutors “told me that my husband is not dumb and that he will come to get me out,” she added.
Tymoshenko, who served as prime minister twice, was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in October for abuse of office in reaching a 2009 gas agreement with Russia.
Western officials have, however, denounced the conviction as a politically motivated attempt by President Viktor Yanukovych to finish off his longtime political foe.
Tymoshenko has said she is a victim of political persecution and has committed no crimes, while Yanukovych denies interference in the investigations against her.
Isabella Kiritchenko’s ordeal began on Sept. 2 when she was detained for alleged document fraud in trying to sell her husband’s apartment in Kyiv.
Her lawyer said she had been tricked by her broker.
She was held for more than two months at Lukyanivska detention center in Kyiv and claims to have slept on a mattress on the floor of an overcrowded cell at times.
A 57-year-old cancer survivor, she said her health deteriorated in jail and she lost 12 kilograms.
One evening when a tooth fell out and blood appeared in her mouth, she was simply offered a pain-killing injection, she said.
After returning home to the U.S., Kiritchenko said she had two surgeries on her gums. “The bone under the gums rotted,” she said.
Prison officials did not respond to Kyiv Post inquiries about the conditions of her detention.
Isabella Kiritchenko was eventually released on Nov. 15 and the charges withdrawn with no explanation from officials.
Petro Kiritchenko, also speaking by phone from San Francisco, refused to comment on reports claiming that he had given testimony in exchange for his wife’s freedom.
But he upheld his wife’s story, suggesting that she “was arrested simply to get through to me.”
Prosecutors have stepped up their attempts to build additional criminal cases against Tymoshenko, ignoring demands from the U.S. and Europe to free her.
Investigators have opened criminal probes into alleged financial wrongdoing when she headed a gas-trading company in the mid-1990s.
Deputy General Prosecutor Rinat Kuzmin upped the ante in a recent interview by saying that investigators also have evidence linking Tymoshenko and Lazarenko to the 1996 murder of Shcherban, the influential businessman and lawmaker.
Shcherban and his wife were assassinated on the Donetsk Airport runaway in November 1996.
Yevhen Shcherban, murdered by hitmen in 1996, was an influential lawmaker and businessman
Prosecutors at the time said the gangland-style murder was intended to eliminate competition for control of Ukraine’s natural gas industry.
Over the years, law enforcement officials have claimed that Lazarenko hired men to kill Shcherban, all charges denied by Lazarenko.
In past interviews, Kuzmin said Petro Kiritchenko could have key evidence linking Tymoshenko and Lazarenko to the crimes.
“It has been established that the killer received money from Tymoshenko and Lazarenko’s firms,” Kuzmin told the Associated Press in a recent interview.
Both Lazarenko and Tymoshenko have repeatedly denied involvement in the murder or any financial wrongdoing.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine did not respond to inquiries on the issue. In the past, they have denied allegations of using pressure on Isabella Kiritchenko to persuade her husband into providing testimony.
But according to Isabella Kiritchenko, one official from the prosecutor’s office went as far as appealing to a court to prolong her time in detention by citing her husband’s “links to Lazarenko.”
She said she is still recovering from her time in detention.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].
Clich here to read this report in Russian language on www.kyivpost.ua.
