A key witness in the high-profile murder case against Yulia Tymoshenko told a Kyiv court on April 2 that the former prime minister was innocent.
“Tymoshenko did not order the
murder of (Yevhen) Shcherban,” Serhiy Taruta, a Ukrainian multimillionaire and
a key member of Tymoshenko’s former rival business group, told the court during
a pre-trial investigation.
Prosecutors in January accused
Tymoshenko of ordering and paying for the 1996 gangland-style assassination of
Donetsk member of parliament Shcherban. 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.
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.
Taruta, a native of Donetsk
region, was a business associate of Shcherban’s as of the mid-1990s. The two
were among the co-founders of Industrial Union of Donbass (IUD), a large
company that at the time 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.
Taruta told the judge at the
Appeals Court of Ukraine that initially Shcherban’s business group and
Tymoshenko’s United Energy Systems of Ukraine, based in Dnipropetrovsk, had a
conflict of interests because both corporations wanted to supply gas to
consumers in Donetsk region.
“There was a regular business
conflict… After we agreed, we developed a normal, working relationship,”
Ukrainian media quoted Taruta as saying.
He said he “did not know” who could
have ordered the killing of Shcherban or of any threats on his life, had no
information on Tymoshenko’s alleged financing of the murder, and said
Shcherban’s business interests did not cross with those of Tymoshenko’s gas-trading
company.
“Yevhen had a lot of business, but
in no way did he cross or integrate with UESU,” Taruta said.
But Oleh Pushkar, deputy head of
the Main Investigation Department for Special Cases of the General Prosecutor’s
office, said that Taruta’s testimony in court is the opposite of what he said
when questioned earlier.
Taruta had been questioned four
times in this case, according to Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper, which has
been following the case closely.
“Actually, his current court
testimony absolutely do not fit into the protocols which were signed by him and
the statements he had previously made. Actually, these testimonies differ
drastically,” Pushkar told Interfax-Ukraine after the court hearing.
Serhiy Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s top legal
counsel in court, said that prosecutors should close the case against
Tymoshenko after Taruta’s April 2 testimony. “There is no case. There is no
testimony, which would confirm that Yulia Tymoshenko had anything to do with
this tragedy,” Vlasenko said, according to Batkivshchyna’s website.
Vlasenko said that Taruta was the
first real witness in the ongoing case because all previous witnesses were
relying on words of “third-fourth-fifth persons.” Taruta, on the other hand,
was someone who “personally took part in negotiations, was involved in
financial and economic activity of IUD, and who controlled the financial and
economic activity of IUD as a matter of his job.”
Taruta said that in December 1995,
nearly a year before the murder, the rival groups signed an amicable agreement that
wasn’t breached.
The court has heard four witnesses
in this case during the pre-trial investigation in February and March,
including three from the prosecution. All witnesses from the prosecution
pointed to Tymoshenko as the person behind the murder.
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.
Kyiv
Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com.
