Former premier's claim that 'persecution' gave him a heart attack fails to deter parliament from lifting is immunity
lift the opposition leader's immunity to prosecution.
The decision effectively places the former prime minister in indefinite exile, as he left the country just two days before the vote.
In a desperate appeal read to parliament by Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko, Lazarenko said he was in a Greek hospital recovering from a stress-caused heart attack.
'My psychological state and that of my family, caused by political persecution … and even death threats led to a serious deterioration in my state of health,' Lazarenko said. 'A sharp rise in blood pressure and a sudden heart attack forced me to call an ambulance.'
However, the appeal won little sympathy, perhaps because Lazarenko had cried heart trouble before. The last time was on June 19, 1997, when he checked himself into a Ukrainian hospital just as parliament was preparing to hear a fresh batch of corruption allegations against him.
At that time, President Leonid Kuchma declared Lazarenko 'on leave' from his post as prime minister. But Lazarenko never returned to the job, and by fall he had transformed himself into Kuchma's sworn arch-rival and leader of the opposition Hromada party.
Lazarenko's written plea from abroad was a big climb-down from the combative pose he had struck since returning to Ukraine in mid-December from Switzerland, where he was jailed for two weeks on charges of money-laundering related to the Ukrainian investigation.
On Jan. 22, the Hromada party nominated Lazarenko as its presidential candidate, although recent polls show he has less than 5 percent of Ukrainians' support.
In an interview with The New York Times published on Feb. 15, Lazarenko promised to make an announcement on Feb. 17 that would make clear he had broken no Ukrainian law.
Lazarenko also promised to tell all to prosecutors on March 1 about his former colleagues' misdeeds, including 'how money was collected for election campaigns, how banks and plants were taxed, and where the money goes.'
'And I shall name all the names and accounts of the people supporting the president,' Lazarenko said.
Some time between giving that interview and its publication, Lazarenko apparently changed his mind. According to state television channel UT-1, Lazarenko flew to Greece on Feb. 15 on a plane belonging to the company United Energy Systems. The private Era channel reported that Lazarenko sent his family to the United States.
Kuchma's chief prosecutor, Mykhailo Potebenko, first tried to convince parliament to give up Lazarenko for arrest and prosecution in March 1998, just before the last parliamentary elections.
Before the vote, Potebenko reiterated his desire to charge Lazarenko with illegally opening hard-currency accounts abroad, hiding hard-currency profits, stealing state property, abusing public authority and abusing public funds.
'We will not sit around, we will demand Interpol's aid in tracking him down,' Potebenko said at the hearing.
Along with his appeal to parliament, Lazarenko attached documents from a Greek hospital that said he had been accepted into a Greek emergency ward with symptoms of potential heart failure, including high blood pressure, sleepiness and burning in the heart area. The document said Lazarenko would have to stay in the hospital for at least three days for further examinations and treatment.
According to Tkachenko, the document was certified by the signature of a clinic's doctor and a stamp. However, Tkachenko's reading of the hospital's name was garbled and the documents were not shared with reporters. Unconfirmed rumors circulated that Lazarenko had already left Greece, and some deputies expressed doubt that he was ever there.
Potebenko leafed through 17 pages as he read his address to parliament, which listed some of the alleged misdeeds. Among the sparse new information was an allegation that as prime minister in 1996-97 Lazarenko had spent Hr 964,000 (about $500,000) to reshape a lake on the property of the state dacha he was living in at the time.
Although parliament's ethics committee, headed by Hromada deputy Viktor Omelich, voted to postpone its hearings on Lazarenko's case until his recovery and return, the full parliament decided to proceed.
The symptoms listed on the Greek hospital documents were virtually identical to those reported by Lazarenko's doctors in June 1997. Eight days into that hospitalization, doctors said they still weren't sure whether Lazarenko would require surgery.
After Kuchma sacked Lazarenko permanently, Lazarenko quietly went home. He then grew increasingly oppositionist as Kuchma's new government, led by Valery Pustovoitenko, began canceling the various sweetheart deals Lazarenko had arranged for United Energy Systems.
Many of the corruption allegations against Lazarenko revolve around highly profitable gas-trading contracts he granted to UES when he was prime minister in 1996-97. Lazarenko has repeatedly denied he has any stake in the company.
Potebenko said Lazarenko had 10 Ukrainian diplomatic, official and ordinary passports that he had used for his various trips abroad. He said to investigate the case, his office would seek assistance from its counterparts in Switzerland, Poland and Virgin Islands.
Lazarenko was released from Swiss jail on bail of 4 million Swiss francs and is due to return there for questioning in early March.
'Many of his actions are still under investigation, and I deliberately did not mention them,' Potebenko said.
In the note to parliament sent by Lazarenko, he denied the prosecutor's charges, and said the prosecutor failed to present any direct evidence of wrongdoing.
'The appeal of the prosecutor is biased and unfair,' he said in the letter. 'One of the purposes of this show is to destroy Lazarenko as a politician … before the presidential election.'
Lazarenko did not deny that he had businesses abroad and opened accounts in foreign banks, but denied he did it illegally. His fellow deputies condemned him for it anyway.
'State officials are prohibited to participate in commercial activity, and deputies who declare an annual income of Hr 14,000 are not supposed to open foreign bank accounts,' Natalia Vitrenko said on behalf of her Progressive Socialist Party's faction.
The ethics committee said the evidence presented by the prosecutor was insufficient to prove Lazarenko's guilt.
'At the time of consideration of the evidence, the committee did not receive any direct evidence of Lazarenko's guilt,' said Socialist deputy Serhy Sas, who chaired the committee's hearings on the case.
Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz – another of Kuchma's rivals in the upcoming election – said the case was obviously a setup.
'It would be politically advantageous for me to vote for lifting the immunity, but I will not vote that way because it's a farce,' he told parliament.
Moroz was one of only four deputies outside the Hromada faction who voted against lifting Lazarenko's immunity.
Many deputies agreed that the prosecutors' zeal for the case was politically motivated, but said they would vote to life immunity anyway.
'Pavel Ivanovich [Lazarenko] is prosecuted not because he stole, but because he quarreled with those in power while dividing the loot,' said Serhy Hmyrya, a Communist deputy.
Hmyrya said hundreds just like Lazarenko are sitting in high posts in the presidential administration, parliament and government.
Independent deputy Hryhory Omelchenko said he and colleagues were collecting signatures to initiate impeachment proceedings against Kuchma, who he said 'must be held responsible for not seeing who [Lazarenko] was.'
Prosecutor Potebenko said he had investigations running against several other parliament deputies, but didn't give names.
Lazarenko is Ukraine's second prime minister to go into exile over corruption charges. Yukhim Zvyahilsky, who was acting prime minister from September 1993 to June 1994, lived in Israel from November 1994 to March 1997 while a threat of prosecution hung over him in Ukraine. He is currently a prominent deputy in parliament.
