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District court in Kiev chooses arrest as pretrial measure for former premier

October 13, the Security Service of Ukraine instituted another criminal case wherein Timoshenko is charged with an attempt at a gross embezzlement of budget money

KIEV, December 8 (Itar-Tass) – A district court in Kiev has chosen arrest as a pretrial measure for former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko under a new criminal case pertaining to financial irregularities in the United Energy Systems of Ukraine corporation.

An offsite session of the Shevchenkovsky district court, which lasted more than ten hours Thursday, answered a request of investigators of the Ukrainian Security Service, Timoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko said.

Timoshenko is already under arrest in connection with the so-called ‘natural gas case’ and she is staying in a pretrial jail ward.

The press service of the bloc of political parties carrying her own name /BYT/ recalled in this connection that Timoshenko’s deteriorating health does not make it possible for her to move and that is why the judges decided to hold the offsite session right in the ward of the Lukyanovsky jail.

Neither members of parliament nor reporters were admitted to the compound of the jail when the court session was in progress.

The reporters joined a small group of Timoshenko’s supporters at the checkpoint of the compound awaiting the court’s decisions.

October 11, 2011, Kiev’s Pechersky district court sentenced Timoshenko to seven years in jail and banned her from occupying governmental positions for another three years upon finding her guilty of an abuse of occupational powers in the process of signing agreements with Russia on supplies and transits of natural gas in 2009.

October 13, the Security Service of Ukraine instituted another criminal case wherein Timoshenko is charged with an attempt at a gross embezzlement of budget money by relegating the liabilities of a private corporation totaling $ 405.5 million to the government.

The country’s electric power monopoly, the United Energy Systems of Ukraine, of which Timoshenko was President – and de facto owner – at the time, owed the money to the Russian Defense Ministry. She is accused of committing the attempt in complicity with the then Prime Minister, Pavel Lazarenko.

Department of Investigations at the State Tax Service also issued charges to her to the tune of $ 165 million November 10. She is charged with concealing the earnings in foreign currency, embezzling the budgetary money, evading taxes in the amount of $ 6 million through a jobbing with payments for material valuables, and concealing revenues in offshore companies.