Former First Deputy Head of Naftogaz Ukrainy Ihor Didenko has told the court that he signed agreements on the customs clearance of natural gas owned by RosUkrEnergo in 2009 because he was absolutely sure that he had received the directives to sign them from the Cabinet of Ministers, rather than from Yulia Tymoshenko, who headed the government at that time.
"I would have never have signed the contracts that I signed, and I would have not submitted them for consideration by [Naftogaz’s] board if I had known that the directives obliging me to sign these agreements were issued by Tymoshenko alone, rather than being approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine," Didenko’s lawyer Ihor Stepanov quoted his client as saying.
"When they showed them to me, I was absolutely sure that these were the directives of the Cabinet of Ministers, rather than of Tymoshenko… So I’m very sorry that I was obliged to fulfill the personal instructions of the former prime minister while taking my decisions," Didenko said at a session of Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court on Aug. 31.
Stepanov said that his client Didenko had made such statements during the debate in court regarding the case on the former Naftogaz first deputy head.
"It’s his vision… I understand that it is his thoughts that he weighed and expressed in court," the lawyer said.
As reported, the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce obliged Naftogaz on June 8, 2010 to return RosUkrEnergo 11 billion cubic meters of gas and also pay it a penalty in the amount of 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas, as stipulated by the contract.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) completed its pre-trial investigation into a criminal case against the Naftogaz of Ukrainy and the State Customs Service officials charged with misappropriating gas belonging to the Swiss-based gas trader RosUkrEnergo and its illegal customs clearance in February-March 2009.
The SBU believes the investigators had gathered enough evidence confirming the defendants’ guilt. Didenko, former Head of the State Customs Service Anatoliy Makarenko, and Deputy Head of the Energy Regional Customs Taras Shepitko were arrested in connection with the case. Makarenko was detained in late June 2010, while Didenko was arrested in July 2010.
On July 5, 2011, Kyiv Court of Appeals released Makarenko and Shepitko from custody. At the same time, the court refused to release Didenko from custody.
On July 25, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv satisfied the request by Didenko’s defense team and separated the materials on their defendant into a separate criminal case.
On Aug. 30, 2011, the prosecutors in the trial of Didenko came to a conclusion that the charges against the defendant should be changed to milder ones, Stepanov said. The lawyer said that the charges brought against his client were changed from Part 2 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code to Part 2 of Article 364, which provides for a milder penalty, and in particular, one that doesn’t involve the confiscation of property.
