Deputy Prime Minister says arrest a political act motivated by her anticorruption activities in Ukraine's energy sector
city events beginning to swirl out of control within Ukraine’s energy sector this week, gas deals with Turkmenistan and Russia notwithstanding, the latest twist in the byzantine drama centers on the recent arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s husband Oleksandr Tymoshenko on Monday.
The latest report on Tymoshenko quotes the government minister as saying in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine that it would come as no surprise if she were to repeat her husband’s destiny.
“After the latest events, nothing would surprise me,” she stated during the interview with the news agency.
According to the Interfax report, Tymoshenko is certain that her husband, Oleksandr Tymoshenko, was arrested as a result of her anticorruption activities within Ukraine’s energy sector.
According to Tymoshenko, up to Hr 5 million per year were taken out of the shadow economy and directed toward energy producers as a direct result of the government’s activity. As a result, the deputy PM strongly suspects that shadow company leaders, or local “oligarchs”, are trying to put pressure on her by arresting her husband and trying to stop an increase in controls on cash flows in the energy market, a Reuters report said.
Tymoshenko also said that those same people were trying to destroy her as the leader of the country’s energy sector and attempting to return the corrupt system that had been in place before, Interfax reported.
“They [law enforcement bodies] virtually destroyed the office of United Energy Systems of Ukraine”, Tymoshenko said.
According to Tymoshenko, in measures that she said resembled Soviet-style state repressive actions of the ‘30s, special agency militia entered company premises and made employees lie on the floor, as they twisted their hands, checked personal items, and confiscated company documents.
According to the Reuters report, Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Obykhod said that criminal proceedings were launched against Olexander Tymoshenko, a board member of private gas trading firm, Ukraine’s Unified Energy Systems, on state property theft and Russian gas smuggling charges, and Valery Falkovich, the firm’s deputy head, on charges of embezzlement, smuggling and forgery of documents.
“Tymoshenko is accused of large-scale embezzlement of state property,” Obykhod said, giving no further details, the report said, while Falkovich had been part of a criminal syndicate that illegally siphoned off natural gas delivered from neighboring Russia and smuggled it abroad. Obykhod said huge amounts of hard cash had left Ukraine in such deals.
Falkovick and Tymoshenko denied the charges.
But an Interfax report from Monday reads that the two United Energy Systems’ officials were charged with embezzling $800 thousand worth of public funds exporting rolled metal to Far East countries in the ’90s through the Ukrtekhservis structure. In addition, Falkovych is charged with smuggling gas worth Hr 3 billion, which was exported from Russia to the United Energy Systems, and then to the United Kingdom in 1996-1997 through forged documents.
In response to these charges, Tymoshenko said that in 1993, a Chinese company which had business relations with United Energy Systems stole the ship loaded with rolled metal. According to the deputy PM, payments to Ukrtechservice were held up as a result, but the debt owed was paid up in 1997
Yulia Tymoshenko said that her husband was detained in Kyiv on Friday when he traveled to the capital from Dnipropetrovsk to act as a witness in a court case, but she only learned of the action three days later when he was officially placed under arrest and jailed on criminal charges on Monday, a news service reported.
Tymoshenko plans to appeal the court’s decision against her husband and will petition for his release from jail, an Interfax report said.
The name of Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko has also been linked to this company, according to the report.
Yulia Tymoshenko headed the United Energy Systems from 1995-97 prior to her election to parliament and now heads the energy sector as deputy prime minister. While in that position, she has repeatedly threatened to boost controls over cash flows on the domestic energy market carved up by various “shadow businesses”.
“I am not going to resign, or escape abroad, or hide in a hospital,” she said, her voice trembling, a Reuters report said.
Ukraine owes more than $2 billion to Russia for gas but the two have repeatedly failed to agree on how to settle the debt.
Ukraine consumes some 75 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year but produces just 18 bcm. It gets 30 bcm per year in payment for the transit of Russian gas.
Ukrainian officials have admitted that Russian gas crossing its territory in huge underground pipes is often siphoned off illegally but have not been able to stop it.
