Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko also acted on behalf of the head of the national company Naftogaz Ukrainy during talks with Russia's gas giant Gazprom on natural gas exports in January 2009, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko said at a court session on Thursday.
"As far as I understand, the prime minister has no right to give orders to Naftogaz Ukrainy directly," he said.
Naftogaz Ukrainy is a joint-stock company, whose management should have analyzed the situation and made decisions, the former minister said.
Tymoshenko had the right to hold these talks in the capacity of prime minister, but she was only allowed to sign international agreements, Ohryzko said.
However, the contract between Naftogaz Ukrainy and Gazprom is not international, he said.
Ohryzko also said he was convinced that the then authorities should have formed an intergovernmental delegation, appointed its chairman and confirmed its directives, only after which decisions could have been made, according to Interfax report.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was barred from all stages of these negotiations, he said.
"Our specialists could have offered at least advice," Ohryzko said, describing this situation as a consequence of Ukraine’s "law nihilism."
Both the 2009 gas deals and last year’s agreements concluded in Kharkiv are unfavorable for Ukraine and should be annulled, he said.
According to Tymoshenko’s official website ex-prime minister’s defense lawyer Yuriy Sukhov plans to ask the court to postpone the proceedings due to the fact that he wasn’t given records of the hearings that took place after June 29.
"Given the fact that the court technically can’t give me the opportunity to become acquainted with the case, I will ask that the court announce a break so that the court can prepare all the materials and give them to me. The court isn’t ready for me to review the case file," said Sukhov.
"There is volume 16 which ends with the protocol of the hearing from June 29 when Yulia Tymoshenko was handed the indictment. All the other hearings are missing. I requested the audio recordings of these hearings. I just received them from the court and should at least review them, and I need at least four working days to listen to them all," he explained.
Today, durind case hearing in court, Judge Rodion Kireyev has partially satisfied Tymoshenko’s motion to add to the case file an investigative report but refused to allow its author to testify, thus demonstrating the presidential administration’s involvement in the trial.
"I ask that you add these documents to the case file and that the journalist that wrote this be questioned as a witness. This journalist showed that statements from court witnesses are written in the Presidential Administration, which proves that this case was falsified. The investigation showed that the trial is directed by the Presidential Administration. After former Deputy Prosecutor General Tetyana Kornyakova testified that directives aren’t the directives of the Cabinet of Ministers, I understood that she’s being pressured, and the Presidential Administration sent a letter to Ukrayinska Pravda that was allegedly from Kornyakova," Tymoshenko said in court.
"From the first day I publicly said that this isn’t a criminal trial it’s political payback, but for some time there wasn’t proof of the Presidential Administration’s influence over this trial," she added.
Kireyev allowed the article to be added to the case record and denied the request to allow Serhiy Leshchenko to testify, saying that a motion can be entered after all current witnesses have testified to also question him.
