You're reading: Melnychenko says Tymoshenko’s husband proposed that he accuse Yanukovych of ordering Scherban’s killing

Former State Guard Department Major Mykola Melnychenko has said that Oleksandr Tymoshenko, the husband of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has proposed that he falsify the data of video recordings regarding the murder of MP Yevhen Scherban in 1996 and accuse Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych of ordering the killing.

“On July 12, 2012, I received a proposal from Tymoshenko’s family in
the face of Oleksandr Tymoshenko… Being informed about the possibility
of my testimony in the United States regarding a request from the
Prosecutor General’s Office, Oleksandr Tymoshenko proposed that I
deliberately provide false testimony against Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych and testify that he allegedly ordered Scherban’s killing and
that I allegedly have the recordings of conversations between Yanukovych
and [second Ukrainian President Leonid] Kuchma. Moreover, it was
necessary to falsify the recordings and artificially create new ones out
of the original samples of their voices that I have,” he wrote on
Facebook on Saturday.

Melnychenko noted that the ex-prime minister’s husband had made the
proposal to him in Prague (the Czech Republic) in the office of the
Ukrainian European Perspective public organization.

“There I met Vasyl Danyliv [a businessman and close associate of
former Ukrainian Economy Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn] and learned that
the office belongs to him. Subsequently, I learned from other sources
that Danyliv was arrested in Ukraine on suspicion of plotting to
assassinate Vice-President of Rodovid Bank Serhiy Diadechko,” he said.

Melnychenko said that taking into account all information available
to him, he had decided to reject Tymoshenko’s proposal and give true
evidence.

On October 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced
Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for overstepping her authority when
signing 2009 gas contracts with Russia. She is serving her sentence in
Kachanivska Penal Colony in Kharkiv since late December 2011.

Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party’s executive committee and a
parliamentarian, was gunned down while disembarking a plane at the
Donetsk airport on November 3, 1996. The killers fled the scene in a
car. Scherban, his wife and a mechanic died from injuries on the spot.
The plane’s flight engineer injured to his neck died later in a
hospital. Law enforcement agencies ruled out political motives behind
the crime.

The Luhansk Regional Court of Appeals found Vadym Bolotskykh guilty
of killing Scherban and sentenced him to life in prison in April 2003.

Yevhen Scherban’s son, Ruslan Scherban, a member of the Donetsk
Regional Council, said at a press conference on April 4, 2012 that he
had passed documents indicating to Tymoshenko’s and Lazarenko’s possible
involvement in his father’s murder to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Tymoshenko and Lazarenko have categorically denied their involvement in the murder.

Tymoshenko’s husband was granted political asylum in the Czech Republic.