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New criminal case against Timoshenko to go to court within days

A new criminal case against former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko will go to court within the next five days

KIEV, March 29 (Itar-Tass) —— A new criminal case against former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko will go to court within the next five days, Deputy Prosecutor General Yevgeny Blazhivsky said.

The case concerns Timoshenko’s activities when she headed the Unified Energy Systems (UES) of Ukraine.

Blazhivsky said that both Timoshenko and her lawyers have studied the case files.

“Full copies of the criminal case were given to Timoshenko today,” he said on Wednesday, Match 28.

The Prosecutor General’s Office has also filed a lawsuit demanding compensation from Timoshenko for damages in the amount of 19.5 million hryvnia in this case.

Blazhivsky said the damage was caused by embezzlement of budget funds and tax evasion.

Earlier, Ukrainian Security Service chief Igor Kalinin said the investigators have collected enough evidence to prove Timoshenko’s culpable actions committed when she headed the United Energy Systems of Ukraine.

Ukrainian mass media quoted Kalinin as saying that “the investigation department of the Security Service of Ukraine is working day and night and has collected enough evidence to take further procedural steps.”

After Timoshenko and her lawyers have studied the case files within the time period determine by court (by March 28, 2012), the criminal case and the indictment will be submitted to the Kharkov region prosecutor’s office. “After that the prosecutor will decide, if there are sufficient grounds, whether to send the case to court for examination on the merits,” Kalinin said.

“It is the prosecutor who makes the final assessment in any case when approving an indictment. Then the court will have its say,” he added.

On October 20, 2011, the Prosecutor General's Office cancelled the decision to close the criminal case against Timoshenko in which she was charged with embezzlement of more than 25 million hryvnia (more than 10 million U.S. dollars at the exchange rate of 1995-1997, when Timoshenko headed the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine), tax evasion in the amount of more than 20 million hryvnia by using a criminal financial scheme for settlements with the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine for natural gas and by concealing incomes from the operations of her offshore company Somolli Enterprise Limited from taxation.

On October 11, 2011, Kiev's Pechersky District Court sentenced Yulia Timoshenko to seven years in prison and upheld Naftogaz Ukrainy's lawsuit seeking compensation of 1.516 billion hryvnia (189.5 million U.S. dollars) for damage sustained by the company as a result of the gas contracts signed with Russia in 2009.