The Pechersky District Court of Kyiv has started its next session of hearings of a criminal case opened against former Prime Minister and Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
The session is being chaired by Judge Rodion Kireyev, according to Tymoshenko’s website and Interfax.
Tymoshenko, her lawyer, Ukrainian MP Serhiy Vlasenko, and two more lawyers are present in the courtroom.
There are also about 30 MPs from the BYT-Batkivschyna faction.
Vlasenko has said he is indignant that journalists were not let into the courtroom of the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv, which is considering the gas supply case against Tymoshenko on Monday.
"I want to tell you that the courtroom is absolutely empty. Some unknown people came in, and it’s unclear why journalists were not let in the courtroom," he said before entering the courthouse on Monday.
Vlasenko said that this was linked to the desire to make the trial closed to the public.
"I emphasize again that the courtroom is empty, and that there’s not a single representative of the media there," he said. On July 15, Lilia Frolova, a prosecutor in the judicial process on a gas supply case opened against Tymoshenko, finished reading the indictment, in which she said that Tymoshenko had signed "economically disadvantageous and unacceptable" contracts with Russia and that her actions fell under Part 3, Article 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (abuse of power or office).
CHARGES AGAINST TYMOSHENKO
– In 2001, formal charges of forgery and smuggling gas were brought against Tymoshenko while she was head of United Energy Systems, a private gas trading firm in the mid-1990s.
– Then President Leonid Kuchma, her bitter critic, accused her several times of exceeding her powers as deputy prime minister. Tymoshenko denounced the criminal investigations as a witch-hunt, saying her efforts to clean up the corrupt energy sector threatened the interests of powerful businessmen. She spent a month in a detention centre following the investigation, but a court cleared her.
– In May 2010, Ukraine’s state prosecutor launched a new criminal case relating to what it said was the misuse by Tymoshenko’s government of about $290 million in cash received for selling carbon quotas.
– In the latest trial the prosecution has alleged that Tymoshenko abused her power in the signing of a 2009 gas import agreement with Russia.
The prosecution said that, without consulting her government, she coerced the then-head of state-owned Naftogaz to sign the gas deal with Russia’s Gazprom. She has denied this.
