KIEV, January 13 (Itar-Tass) —— Ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko’s daughter Yevgenia sold her restaurant Ciro’s Pomodoro in downtown Kiev.
The restaurant has a new director, a new chef and a new menu.
The Ukrainian newspaper Segodnya said that the restaurant was sold two months ago. Yevgenia’s husband, rock musician Sean Carr stopped performing at the restaurant. The restaurant personnel refused to name the new owner.
The deal might have cost over $1.5 million, Restaurant Consulting General Director Olga Nasonova said. Other restaurant keepers think that Yevgenia might have quitted the business formally in order to avoid problems. Some say that she may leave the country, following her father’s example, and has begun to close down her business.
Yevgenia Timoshenko and Sean Carr opened the restaurant in April 2009. There are similar restaurants in London, Dubai, Athens, Bucharest and Abu Dhabi with the chief owner Ciro Orsini.
Yevgenia said she frequented Ciro’s Pomodoro in London when she was a student and decided that a similar restaurant should open in Kiev.
Alexander Timoshenko, husband of the jailed Ukrainian ex-premier, was granted political asylum in the Czech Republic on January 6.
The Czech media said that he applied to the Czech authorities for political asylum in late December 2011.
The political asylum request of Yulia Timoshenko’s husband to the Czech Republic aims to deprive the Ukrainian authorities of additional levers of pressure on the ex-premier, the Batkivshchyna Party said.
It said the authorities were trying to put pressure on the opposition leader via her family.
“The regime illegally reanimated the 15-year-old criminal cases, which had been stopped by the Supreme Court, and started to persecute the family and friends of the ex-premier,” the party said.
Alexander Timoshenko plans to register an international public organization, Batkivshchyna, in the Czech Republic and to make Yevgenia its honorary chairperson. He said that the organization “would analyze activity of the incumbent Ukrainian authorities and their criminal looting of Ukraine, to cover actions of the Yanukovich government in the foreign media, and to do constant monitoring of the observation of human rights and freedoms and democratic principles in Ukraine.”
The Kiev Pechersky District Court sentenced Timoshenko on October 11, 2011, to seven years in prison for exceeding her authority in the signing of the gas contracts with Russia in 2009. She was also compelled to pay 1.51 billion hryvni (almost $200 million) to Neftegaz Ukrainy. The Kiev Appeals Court upheld the ruling of the Kiev Pechersky Court on December 23.
Timoshenko was transferred to the 54th penitentiary in Kharkov shortly before the New Year.
Timoshenko was also charged with writing off the debt of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine private corporation to the Russian Defense Ministry worth $405,500,000 to the state budget of Ukraine, while being the corporation president, under conspiracy with other former Prime Minister Pavel Lazarenko. Timoshenko chaired the corporation in 1995-1997. She said in June 2011 that there were no debts to the Russian Defense Ministry.
On November 11 the Ukrainian State Tax Service charged ex-CEO of the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine Corporation Timoshenko with concealing $165 million revenues, embezzling public funds and dodging over 47 million hryvni (about $6 million) in taxes.
The Timoshenko case caused harsh comments from Europe.