An arrest warrant was issued on June 26 for Renat Kuzmin, one of Ukraine's most controversial prosecutors. He has been missing since the beginning of June, according to the Interior Ministry’s website.
Kuzmin served as the first deputy general prosecutor under disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, overthrown on Feb. 22 by the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Kuzmin played a major role in politically motivated criminal convictions of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who both served prison terms. Lutsenko spent two years in prison, while Tymoshenko served six months longer before being freed the day Yanukovych left power.
Kuzmin’s former boss, ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, has been on the wanted list since April 28 and has appeared on Russian TV alongside his friend and patron Yanukovych.
Kuzmin is suspected of organizing the illegal arrest of Lutsenko in 2010. He is also under investigation for bullying a judge into issuing a ruling to send Lutsenko to prison.
He has always denied a political component in his work. “I’m deputy general prosecutor for everybody,” Kuzmin told the Kyiv Post in April 2013. “The fact that I’m investigating criminal cases against politicians causes criticism from politicians.”
In the meantime, Ukraine’s Supreme Court on June 24 ruled that Tymoshenko committed no crime when signing a gas agreement with Russia in 2009. Tymoshenko’s lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko said the decision was unique in many ways and that it was rare to have all 42 judges of the highest court to rule on the same case.
“This is a very telling thing, a very rare thing,” Vlasenko said.
He said Tymoshenko “had extremely positive emotions” to receive the verdict. “Of course she was happy about this decision – like any person who went through three years of humiliation to prove her point,” he said. “For us, it’s important to establish that there was no crime, as it confirms our thesis we have been saying for three years, and that leading European politicians have been saying for three years, that it was all political propaganda and political repressions.”
Tymoshenko was also probed for financial crimes while running her gas company United Energy Systems of Ukraine in the 1990s, but the case was closed by a Kharkiv court earlier this year.
She remains under investigation in the 1998 murder case of Yevhen Shcherban, but Vlasenko says witnesses for prosecution are coming forward with statements that the previous government forced them to make statements against Tymoshenko.
Kuzmin had his US visa revoked in 2012 for making illegal trips to USA while investigating this case against Tymoshenko because one of the key witnesses for the prosecution resides there. Kuzmin wrote several open letters of U.S. President Barack Obama to complain.
