A key witness in the high-profile criminal case against Yulia Tymoshenko told a Kyiv court she ordered and paid for the 1996 murder of a business rival. Prosecutors are expected to make his testimony the focal point of their legal arguments despite it being purportedly read via video link and based exclusively on second-hand information.
Petro Kirichenko – a close associate of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko before turning state’s witness and giving evidence to a U.S. court that convicted him of money laundering – said he personally passed cash and made bank transfers that paid for the gangland-style murder of Donetsk businessman and lawmaker Yevhen Shcherban. However, he claimed he only had “suspicions” and no prior knowledge for what the money was being used.
“I know that the order (for the hit) came from Tymoshenko and Lazarenko,” he told the court on May 15 via video link in the U.S. He added that the idea came from Tymoshenko, but said his knowledge of the case comes from Oleksandr Milchenko, a former convict who carried out the murder, and provided no documented proof to support his claim.
Some of Kirichenko’s statements furthermore contradicted his earlier testimonies about Tymoshenko’s role in the murder, including those he gave to Ukrainian and American investigators in San Francisco in 2001 when questioned in a different case.
Tymoshenko’s lawyers believe that Kirichenko was bullied into testifying against Tymoshenko by Ukraine’s prosecutors, a charge they deny.
Shcherban was a Verkhovna Rada deputy when he was shot dead at the Donetsk airport on his arrival from Moscow on November 3, 1996. The gunmen fled the scene by car. Shcherban, his wife and a mechanic died on the spot from gunshot wounds. The plane’s flight engineer died later in the hospital.
Previously, General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka claimed Tymoshenko paid $2.3 million from her accounts, while Lazarenko paid another half a million in cash for the murder and said their business rivalry was the main motive. If convicted, Tymoshenko faces life in prison, in addition to the seven years she has been serving since 2011 for brokering a gas deal with Russia.
Prosecution of Tymoshenko has been denounced in the West as political, designed to remove her as a key political opponent. The European Court for Human Rights ruled recently that her detention in 2011 was for reasons “other” than criminal prosecution.
Moreover, several key witnesses who had already testified in the ongoing murder case, said they either had no knowledge of Tymoshenko’s involvement in the murder, or said she was innocent.
In 1996, Tymoshenko was a major gas trader in Ukraine, running a company under the patronage of former Prime Minister Lazarenko, who is currently in a U.S. jail awaiting a potential extradition. Several witnesses in the murder case have also described their relationship as “intimate.”
Kirichenko was Lazarenko’s confidante and keeper of most of his money in the 1990s. He said Lazarenko only had two bank accounts, and the rest of his massive fortune went through Kirichenko’s accounts. “All the financial operations were basically conducted through me,” he told the court.
He said Tymoshenko’s Dnipropetrovsk-based United Energy Systems of Ukraine received many preferences when Lazarenko occupied top positions in the central government, but in 1996 she ran into a conflict with company in Donetsk controlled by Shcherban, also a gas trader.
“I know from Lazarenko’s words that she was not allowed to directly supply gas (to companies based in the Donetsk region), but only to the border of the oblast,” Kirichenko said, explaining the motives of the murder.
His testimony, contradicts earlier statements by two key representatives of the Industrial Union of Donbas (ISD), founded by Shcherban. Serhiy Taruta, a multimillionaire and key member of ISD who was in charge of its day-to-day operations, said by late 1996 all business conflicts were resolved.
“There was a regular business conflict… After we agreed, we developed a normal, working relationship,” he told the same Court of Appeals in Kyiv on April 2. His testimony was later corroborated by another top member of the same business group, Vitaliy Haiduk.
Haiduk said the gas supply agreement between ISD and UESU was signed on Dec. 30, 1995.
Kirichenko, however, insisted that prior to the murder Lazarenko told him that Tymoshenko was “in grave danger” because of business conflicts, and asked if he knew of a “criminal authority” who could help. Kirichenko introduced him to Milchenko, who had just come out of prison.
Kirichenko said he later received an order from Lazarenko to pay $3 million to Milchenko, and $500,000 directly from Lazarenko in cash as the first installment. He said he believed at the time that it was “for Tymoshenko’s security.”
“But when I found out from the mass media that Shcherban was murdered, I had a bad premonition,” he told the court. He said he was later approached by Milchenko with complaints that both Tymoshenko and Lazarenko were hiding from him, and failing to meet their financial obligation.
Kirichenko quoted Milchenko as telling him he “had done the job, got rid of Shcherban.” Milchenko himself died in 1997 under mysterious circumstances.
Kirichenko said he made the rest of the payment from his own offshore account on May 20, 1997 at the order of Lazarenko after he raised the issue with him. He said he had received the money for payment from Tymoshenko’s account.
However, during cross-examination, Tymoshenko’s chief defender Serhiy Vlasenko said the account in question had no contributions from Tymoshenko’s companies until eight days later. Moreover, he said there is no link between the money Tymoshenko paid and payment for murder – a crucial piece of evidence prosecutors rely on.
Moreover, Vlasenko quoted an earlier statement from Kirichenko who had said in 2001 that his financial dealings with Milchenko were “an investment” into a joint agriculture business in Ukraine.
Before the hearing, Vlasenko told the Kyiv Post that Kirichenko’s testimony not only incriminate him, but violates the terms of his deal with the U.S. government.
“The deal with the Americans does not cover issues related to murder,” he said. The U.S. Embassy had no comment on this issue.
There is evidence that Kirichenko may have been pressured into testifying against Tymoshenko. His wife Isabella, a cancer survivor, was detained in Ukraine in 2011 and kept in pre-trial detention for several months for alleged document fraud while trying to sell an apartment in Kyiv. She fell very ill in prison and lost 12 kilograms in weight.
She was later released and told the Kyiv Post in a telephone interview from the U.S. that she was pressured into persuading her husband to “answer some questions” in the Tymoshenko case.
After Kirichenko agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, some of his assets in Ukraine had been unfrozen, and several criminal cases against him closed. When questioned about these episodes in court on May 15, Kirichenko refused to give any details.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com
