The closest allies of imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are under attack.
The year kicked off
with a leak of personal emails and other data about Tymoshenko’s
daughter, Eugenia, and her close ally, former Deputy Prime Minister
Hryhoriy Nemyria.
Tymoshenko’s
lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, then came under fire.
Prosecutors have
made several allegations against Vlasenko, a lawmaker in her minority
Batkivshchyna faction in parliament. He is suspected of failing to
comply with a Jan. 16 court order to pay a debt that resulted after a
messy divorce from Nataliya Okunska. He was also accused of stealing
a car from his ex-wife.
All these allegations have
prevented him from receiving a diplomatic passport that would allow
him to travel to Strasbourg for the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe session on Jan. 21-25. Worse still, he is accused
of banditry – an offense that could land him in prison for up to
seven years if he is found guilty by court.
At a press
conference on Jan. 21, Vlasenko attempted to refute every one of
those allegations, one by one, by showing payment orders and car
ownership documents, and explaining the interaction with his ex-wife
that is now interpreted as banditry. Nevertheless, Vlasenko feels his
explanations and documented proof will not be sufficient for the law
enforcers.
“Most likely, I will be
arrested in three weeks time,” Vlasenko predicts. But for that to
happen, his lawmaker’s immunity for prosecution would have to be
stripped.
But his former wife,
Okunska, said on her Facebook page that his troubles have nothing to
do with politics.
“I have just watched the
news, he is shouting about repressions again. But he is modestly
keeping silence about the main thing: I cannot access my half of the
house, as ordered by court. His guards are not letting me and the
children into the house,” she wrote.
Vlasenko has been
Tymoshenko’s major lawyer and legal representative in court since the
launch of investigations against her two years ago. He says the
attack against him is aimed at trying to deprive Tymoshenko of an
opportunity to defend herself, particularly now, when a third case –
involving alleged murder of a member of parliament in 1996 — is
gaining momentum. Also, decisions are expected soon on two of her
pending cases before the European Court for Human Rights.
Vlasenko’s troubles
started last December, when he was stopped in the Boryspil
International Airport and banned from flying out of the country due
to his alleged failure to make payments to his ex-wife.
Okunska, who publicly
talks about being the cause of Vlasenko’s troubles, says she is only
trying to get him justly punished for his own deeds.
“I am surprised
that whoever sees politics in this, does not see an elementary desire
to protect myself and children from lawlessness,” she said on
Facebook. The former couple have one child in common. Okunska has
four children.
Vlasenko is not the only close Tymoshenko’s ally who
is in trouble, and the troubles of the rest were not caused by
complicated relationships.
Batkivshchyna lawmaker Nemyria has also become
a target for investigations. Prosecutors are investigating him for
allegedly using offshore accounts to pay a British PR firm for
services provided for the Batkivshchyna Party. Nemyria denied any
wrongdoing.
Both he and Tymoshenko’s daughter Eugenia
became targets of privacy rights violations as some of their personal
emails and documents ended up online late last year. The opposition
said some of the documents were forged.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]
