The defense lawyer for the ex-president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, has delivered to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office a statement on his client’s behalf that he will be unable to arrive for questioning on Dec. 5 and Dec. 9 for valid reasons and is ready to testify from his current whereabouts or in the form of a videoconference.
“Today I filed the statement with the Prosecutor General’s Office in the interest, and at the behest, of Viktor Yanukovych, signed by me, about his readiness to answer the investigator’s questions in person at his current whereabouts or in the videoconference mode. Also, evidence was provided of there being valid reasons for his no-show at questioning,” Yanukovych’s lawyer Vitaliy Serdiuk told Interfax-Ukraine on Dec. 5.
One reason is the presence of a real threat to Yanukovych’s life and the Ukrainian state’s inability, given the political situation, to ensure his safety while in Ukraine, the lawyer said.
Thus, a proper communication took place in this process with the Prosecutor General’s Office within the statutory period, which proves the willingness to cooperate with the inquiry, the lawyer said.
Serdiuk also commented on the document read out by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, during a break in the proceedings at the Sviatoshynsky District Court of Kyiv, that Yanukovych is suspected of treason and encroaching on Ukraine’s territorial integrity, noting that from the legal standpoint this act has no legal substantiation.
“The [notice of] suspicion was not served in due manner. Lutsenko’s reading of some document in the courtroom during a break has no legal consequences,” he said.
In addition, Lutsenko himself is a witness in the same trial, the lawyer said. No one heard the prosecutor general as he was reading out the document because the sound and video link with the Rostov regional court were switched off, he said.
Serdiuk said that when his colleague Ihor Fedorenko in the courtroom took documents from Prosecutor General’s Office representatives, that did not constitute a service of the suspicion. “This was a receipt by a defense attorney of copies of the procedural documents pertaining to the case, i.e. these are completely different things,” he said.
Even despite the illegality of such actions, the defense team is still willing to meet investigators “halfway,” Yanukovych’s lawyer said “If there are any suspicions, these must be investigated to establish who is guilty,” he said.
By signing the suspicion document, Lutsenko thereby acknowledged Yanukovych’s presidential status as of March 1, 2014, and the illegality of Verkhovna Rada’s voting on Feb. 22, 2014, on his removal from office, Serdiuk said. Furthermore, this inquiry should have included an investigation of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council resolution of February 28, 2014, which did not impose martial law in Crimea, the defense lawyer said.
