A new high-profile witness in the murder case against Yulia Tymoshenko told a Kyiv court on April 16 that he had no evidence of the former prime minister's involvement.
Vitaliy Haiduk, a
former co-owner of Industrial Union of Donbass (ISD), and former head
of the National Security Council of Ukraine, said that he does not
have any proof that Tymoshenko ordered and paid for the 1996
gangland-style assassination of Donetsk member of parliament Yevhen
Shcherban.
He also testified that
there was no business conflict between Tymoshenko’s United Energy
Systems of Ukraine gas trading company and ISD, which prosecution
alleges was the motive for murder.
“I have no direct prof that Yulia
Tymoshenko is the person who ordered the murder of Shcherban. But not
do I have other evidence that she did not, because I don’t know,”
Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Haiduk as telling
Appeals Court in Kyiv.
On April 2, another key
member of ISD who managed the company at the time, Serhiy Taruta,
testified that Tymoshenko was innocent. But prosecutors insisted that
he changed his testimony in court.
Prosecutors in January accused Tymoshenko of ordering the
hit. She could get up to life in prison if found guilty, in
addition to the seven years she has been serving since 2011 for
brokering a gas deal with Russia. The charges, trial and her
subsequent conviction have been denounced in the West as political
persecution, designed to remove her as a key political opponent.
Both Haiduk and Taruta were co-founders of ISD,
a Donetsk-based company that in the late
1990s made most of its money by supplying gas to the region’s
industrial giants, and selling their commodities such as pipes and
metal though complicated barter schemes.
Tymoshenko, who at the time was known as the Gas Queen of Ukraine,
ran a similar company from Dnepropetrovsk under the patronage of
former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who is currently in a U.S.
jail awaiting a potential extradition.
Serhiy Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s lawyer, said that
after the testimonies of two key witnesses from the rival group, the
case of prosecution is falling apart. “Today,
the whole construction of the investigators is falling apart,” he
said. “We can no longer say today that
there were any sort of business conflicts with UESU and ISD.”
“Witness Haiduk confirmed that in 1995 UESU
was not present on the market in Donetsk Oblast, and in 1996 there
was a contract in place signed on Dec.30, 1995, which was absolutely
religiously followed by the two sides and there were no complaints
about the contact’s implementation,” Vlasenko was quoted by
Batkivshcyna party website as saying.
Taruta also referred to this contract in his
recent testimony when he explained to the court why Tymoshenko could
not have business conflicts with Shcherban.
Haiduk said he exited ISD before the
murder of Shcherban. “This was in July 1996, when I left the
position of deputy governor (of Donetsk region),” he told the
court.
He said all changes in ownership
structure of ISD took place before the murder. He did not know what
happened to the share that was owned by Shcherban after his death.
Previously, General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka made a public
statement that Tymoshenko and Lazarenko had a “joint criminal
intention,” in which they allegedly agreed that Lazarenko would
find the murderers, while Tymoshenko would pay for the murder.
He claimed Tymoshenko paid $2.329 million off her accounts, while
Lazarenko paid another half a million in cash. Despite
testimony to the contrary, Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin
said the case against Tymoshenko is solid.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be
reache at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com.
