Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) on Friday ordered lawmaker Yulia Tymoshenko to pay Hr.33 million ($760,000) bail and imposed a set of procedural obligations in a vote-buying case.
Tymoshenko, leader of the Batkivshchyna parliamentary faction, is accused of bribing lawmakers from other factions to secure votes, a charge she denies.
During the hearing, the prosecutor requested a Hr.50 million ($1 million) bail alongside a tracking device and a no-contact clause with witnesses, while Mykola Tytarenko, Tymoshenko’s lawyer, asked the judge to consider the lawmaker’s upcoming overseas trips.
“I ask the court to attach to the case materials documents confirming the need for Tymoshenko to attend events planned in the United States, as well as in other international institutions. The events are planned for January and February,” Tytarenko said, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
The court reduced the bail to Hr.33 million, though other restrictions were largely upheld, according to RBC-Ukraine.
Tymoshenko has been required to appear at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) as needed, remain within Kyiv Oblast, report any changes to her residence or workplace, surrender her passport, and avoid contact with certain lawmakers involved in the case.
During the court hearing, Tymoshenko asked the judge not to choose a preventive measure and promised “not to take a step away” from Ukraine.
“I will not take a step away from my country,” Tymoshenko herself told the judge, according to Interfax Ukraine. “I ask you, firstly, to understand that there is no crime here. Secondly, do not choose a preventive measure, or in extreme cases, give me the opportunity under personal obligations – I will never violate them.”
The judge then asked whether the obligations would take effect immediately, to which her lawyer, Tytarenko, replied, “not for today and not for tomorrow.” The judge added that preventive measures would be selected first in this case.
According to Ukrinform, Tymoshenko said before Friday’s hearing that “no crime has been committed” and therefore “no preventive measures can be taken.”
She also told the judge that the recording implicating her had been stitched together, alleging that lawmaker Ihor Kopytin from the majority Servant of the People party fabricated evidence to falsely implicate her.
“And there is not a single word about any finances in that conversation, as I remember it,” she said. “Kopytin asked me for a meeting... he offered to cooperate many times.”
What happened?
On Jan. 13, NABU, together with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), accused the leader of an unspecified parliamentary faction of bribing other lawmakers.
On Wednesday, NABU confirmed it had served a notice of suspicion to the suspect – a legal step in Ukraine before formal charges are filed. Media reports linked the case to Tymoshenko, in part because of her signature hairstyle shown in the case materials.
Tymoshenko denied wrongdoing, alleging political persecution and falsified voice recordings that implicated her.
Observers believe multiple lawmakers – both from Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party and among those allegedly bribed – aided NABU in the investigation, though their identities remain unclear.
Who is Tymoshenko?
Born in 1960, Tymoshenko is a veteran Ukrainian politician and a key figure in the 2004 Orange Revolution. She became Ukraine’s first female prime minister in 2005 and served again from 2007 to 2010.
She has been a central figure in Ukrainian politics for decades, leading the Batkivshchyna party and running multiple times for president, including the 2019 elections against President Volodymyr Zelensky and former President Petro Poroshenko.
In 2011, Tymoshenko was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison over the 2009 natural gas deal she signed with Russia’s Gazprom as prime minister. The trial was widely seen as politically motivated, and she was released in 2014 following the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych.