KIEV, December 15 (Itar-Tass) — Kiev court of appeals has put off the hearings of the case of Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko to December 20.
The decision was taken by a college of judges Wednesday.
The judges motivated the postponement by their willingness “to give Timoshenko a third opportunity to participate in the appealing of her case.”
Also, the court issued a resolution to request a certificate from the detention center on the state of Timoshenko’s health and conclusions on her physical ability to take part in the sessions.
The judges once again turned down all the petitions filed by the lawyers representing Timoshenko in the courtroom.
“The college doesn’t see any grounds for entertaining the appeals,” Chief Justice Yelena Sitailo said.
Timoshenko’s lawyers spent two hours earlier in the day declaring their arguments to the judges. If taken on balance, their argumentation boiled down to the importance of reinvestigating the former Prime Minister’s case in court.
For instance, lawyer Alexander Plakhotnyuk pointed out a range of procedural violations made by Justice Rodion Kireyev during the initial consideration of the case in Kiev’s Pechersky district court.
These violations made the whole trial biased and illegal in the final run, Plakhotnyuk said.
He also indicated that the court of the first instance turned down the lawyers’ request to summon the key eyewitnesses for questioning and the fact testifies to the “one-sided and incomplete character” of the trial.
In part, the lawyers asked for summoning a number of former members of the cabinet.
In the light of it, Timoshenko’s defense made a request to question these eyewitnesses and to hold confrontations, for instance, between their client and the incumbent Prime Minister, Nikolai Azarov, former President Viktor Yushchenko, and former CEO of the national oil and gas monopoly Naftogaz Ukrainy, Oleg Dubina.
“The court ignored the requests earlier, and if someone makes claims to justice and equality, then please entertain the petitions, hold expert studies, summon and question eyewitnesses,” Plakhotnyuk asked the judges.
The scope arguments provided the defense include a statement by Igor Kost, the former chief of Naftogaz’s department for complaints, which the lawyers believe will make it possible to reinvestigate the newly unearthed circumstances.
Sergei Vlassenko, another lawyer defending Timoshenko said that in the period where Kost occupied the position at Naftogaz, the corporation received instructions from the Prosecutor General’s Office to initiate lawsuits against Timoshenko over the losses Naftogaz had allegedly sustained due to the Prime Minister’s directives for signing the gas agreements.
Wednesday, Kost confirmed in a conversation with reporters Naftogaz did not have losses arising from whatever actions effectuated by Timoshenko.
“The losses that were imputed by the Prosecutor General’s Office and that the court agreed with have been concocted, in fact,” Kost said. “They were computed with the aid of God only knows what methods.”
Timoshenko’s lawyers filed petitions Wednesday to request the necessary financial documents and the materials highlighting their economic activity in the appropriate period of time.
In addition, they asked for an expert study of natural gas contracts and other materials appended with the case.
The court turned down all the requests, however.