The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has finalized a pretrial inquiry into illegal privatization of telecoms giant Ukrtelecom and has obtained the court’s permission to try former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and former Finance Minister Yuriy Kolobov in absentia; the court’s consent with former First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov’s trial in-absentia is pending, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said.
“As for Azarov, we have finalized the inquiry and have filed a request with the Pechersky Court for handing down an in-absentia judgment,” Lutsenko said in Kyiv on May 22.
He told reporters later on, “Regarding Azarov. We have indeed finalized the inquiry into the embezzlement of 220 million [hryvnias] in the course of Ukraine’s special communication system project. Yanukovych personally gave instructions to Azarov, who passed the instructions to the finance minister; they illegally submitted budgetary amendments, the parliament voted in their favor, and the money was assigned from the state budget.”
The inquiry is over now, Lutsenko said. “We have reasonable suspicions about Yanukovych, Azarov, Kolobov, Arbuzov and some other officials of a lower level,” he said.
“By that moment, we had applied to the court for the pretrial process … and were allowed to handle the trial in-absentia against Yanukovych, Azarov, Kolobov. A decision on Arbuzov is pending,” he added.
He added that the situation with the case against former Energy and Coal Industry Minister Eduard Stavytsky was the same.
As was reported, Azarov was prime minister in Ukraine from March 11, 2010, to Jan. 28, 2014. After EuroMaidan events in February 2014 he fled the country. Later he repeatedly appeared on Russian TV, saying that he was residing in Russia.
The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) of Ukraine has brought charges against the former prime minister under Part 2 of Article 364 (“abuse of official position, which entailed grave consequences”) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Prosecutors suspect Azarov illegally suspended checks on state-run Antonov enterprise in the autumn of 2012 while he was PM. As a result of the move, the PGO claims, the state suffered damage in especially large amounts estimated at over Hr 37 million ($1.7 million). A Ukrainian court issued a warrant to arrest Azarov.
Moreover, the PGO announced on March 24, 2014, that Stavytsky was wanted. He is suspected of large-scale embezzlement.
