A few days ago, the highly publicized criminal case of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine [UESU] was given a fresh impetus. Incidentally, when the Prosecutor General’s Office resumed its investigation, the former president of UESU Yuliya Tymoshenko issued a mass of opposition statements.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has confirmed that four Ukrainian citizens (UESU Board Chairman Yevhen Shaho, General Director and Mrs. Tymoshenko’s father-in-law Hennady Tymoshenko, Chief Accountant Lidiya Sokolchenko, and Accountant Antonina Baliura) were detained by Interpol in Turkey two weeks ago. They were detained under the Ukrainian-Turkish agreement on mutual legal assistance on suspicion of involvement in the Tymoshenko-Lazarenko case. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office told Interfax-Ukraine that their extradition to Ukraine depends solely on the Turkish side.
Investigating the case, the Prosecutor General’s Office brought charges against the four UESU top officials. Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court issued an arrest warrant and ruled to bring them to court. Subsequently, they were declared wanted. According to Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Obikhod, they are indicted of concealing $181.5 million in hard currency receipts during 1996-1997 and massive theft of state funds (UAH 14 million [$6 million]) in 1997-1999 using forged documents on reimbursement of VAT to UESU. In addition, they are charged with an attempt to steal UAH 22.9 million in state funds, smuggling of $2,251 million worth of Russian natural gas through Ukrainian territory, document forgery, and a bribe to the then Prime Minister Lazarenko during Yuliya Tymoshenko’s presidency of the UESU. The criminal case of the former UESU top managers was combined with the case of former Premier Lazarenko who is to stand trial in the United States in early June on charges of money laundering.
The former UESU President, Vice Premier in Viktor Yushchenko’s government, and now a people’s deputy and leader of her own parliamentary faction, Yuliya Tymoshenko, on June 3 stood resolutely in defense of the detainees saying that she would press for their political asylum in Turkey. Also, remembering that she used to be called the only man in Yushchenko’s government, Tymoshenko announced her intention to call for acts of public protest. Apparently, she is counting on the All-Ukraine Committee for Protection Against the Terror of Authorities initiated by her and named Against Arbitrariness. But the other opposition factions in the parliament, especially the Communists and [Viktor Yushchenko’s] Our Ukraine seem to be in no hurry to (at least overtly) support Tymoshenko. Perhaps, they simply don’t want to mix political opposition with someone’s problems at the Prosecutor’s Office.
It should be noted that the ardent mood of the former gas princess has made a certain impact on the public. It even made some Ukrainian mass media announce that all accusations against Tymoshenko were lifted back in April. To verify this, The Day turned to Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Obikhod. He said that the court verdict didn’t come into force since it was overturned in a higher court. “The Tymoshenko case is not closed,” Obikhod said. “It is still being investigated.”
As Obikhod told The Day, a member of parliament cannot be indicted or brought to court as a defendant, but investigations can be made.
A concerned source with The Day who is close to the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the office had been unprofessional and passive in investigating the Tymoshenko-Lazarenko case. And Tymoshenko made the best of it. She managed to present herself as a national heroine and exchange her status of a person responsible for economic problems in the country for the role of an accuser. The source referred to President Kuchma who said that if Lazarenko had been tried in Ukraine, he would have been acquitted, “That’s how it goes in this country’s judiciary”. According to the source, the Prosecutor General’s Office, when charging the UESU managers with bribing Lazarenko, should have explained to the public where, when, and for what they gave him the bribe, what their corporation received for it, and what losses the country’s budget and pensioners sustained. Suffice it to recall how inflation soared immediately after prices for energy sources were raised. And who has analyzed Tymoshenko’s activities at the post of Vice Prime Minister in the Yushchenko government, beginning with her trip to Moscow where she recognized all of Ukraine’s debts for [Russian] natural gas as state liabilities? What about the reform of the coal industry offered by Tymoshenko which, in fact, would have created a scheme for money laundering? It is clear that the Prosecutor General’s Office will have difficulty finding answers to these questions, because political pressure on it will keep growing, the more so that any investigation may be presented as a reprisal against the political opposition.
