Over the past several months, the Prosecutor General’s Office has returned about UAH 27 million [$5 million], Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko stated at a March 12 news conference in Kyiv. According to him, in addition to the well-known “big” criminal cases, some 170 “economic” ones have been sent to the courts. In addition the nation’s chief attorney made several other statements. He said that the office “possesses no evidence indicating President Kuchma’s involvement in Pavlo Lazarenko’s financial machinations.” The people’s deputies who initiated the inquiry were only trying “to bolster their own political image,” he said.
The Prosecutor General reiterated that his staff were not going to interfere in political squabbles. His Deputy Mykola Obikhod said, “Now that Hryhory Omelchenko who initiated numerous inquiries to the Prosecutor’s Office has joined Yuliya Tymoshenko’s election bloc, his moral principles are clear.” In particular, according to Obikhod, a few years ago Omelchenko asked the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate misdeeds in the activity of the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine, then managed by Mrs. Tymoshenko. Incidentally, the criminal case of the latter has not been closed and will be pursued, Obikhod said. According to him, the office has closed only two episodes in the case which, by the new Criminal Code, were not criminal acts.
In addition, another deputy of the Prosecutor General, Oleksiy Bahanets, in charge of the Gongadze case, told reporters that the investigation does not rule out a third examination of the body by foreign experts, if they “agree to work within the limitations of Ukrainian legislation.”
