The State Border Service of Ukraine has not allowed MP Serhiy Vlasenko, a defense lawyer for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, to leave the country, the press service of the Batkivschyna Party has told Interfax-Ukraine.
The statement notes that a border guard did not let Vlasenko to go abroad, referring to a respective court ban.
As reported, Vlasenko stated on Jan. 21 that he might be arrested soon.
“They are likely to arrest me in about three weeks… I’m not making any forecasts, but I know that within a week or ten days, on the order of [Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych, they will submit an inquiry to the Verkhovna Rada [to deprive me of deputy’s immunity] on three cases. They will approve it,” he said.
The MP said that the cases against him were opened due to the non-fulfillment of court rulings and banditry.
Vlasenko also said that he was accused of non-fulfillment of court rulings under a ruling of Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court on the partition of his and his former wife Natalia Okunska’s joint property.
In addition, according to Vlasenko, he, as an MP and a member of the permanent delegation of the Verkhovna Rada to PACE, is not allowed to travel abroad due to the fact that on Jan. 15, 2013, the District Administrative Court decided to satisfy a statement filed by “a female citizen to the Foreign Ministry, in which she requests to ban the Foreign Ministry to make a decision on the registration of a diplomatic passport of Ukraine and issue a diplomatic passport of Ukraine to Serhiy Vlasenko.”
At the same time, First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said that the Prosecutor General’s Office is not planning to arrest Vlasenko, while his ex-wife, Okunska, filed another statement against him this year.
On Jan. 24, Vlasenko planned to fly to Strasbourg to attend a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
