KIEV, April 17 (Itar-Tass) —— Ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister, Batkivshchyna Party leader Yulia Timoshenko will appeal in foreign courts the possible distribution of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office material slandering her reputation, the party’s first deputy chairman Alexander Turchinov told a Tuesday press conference.
“Yulia Vladimirovna told us that she would appeal to courts in the countries, where the slanderous materials were posted, in defense of her reputation,” he said.
Turchinov accused the Prosecutor General’s Office, Foreign Ministry representatives and certain deputies of the ruling party of posting slanderous information about Timoshenko abroad.
Earlier the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office started to investigate the possible involvement of Timoshenko and ex-Prime Minister Pavel Lazarenko in the organization of the murder of Verkhovna Rada deputy Yevgeny Shcherban. First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said he had proof to that. In the words of Kuzmin, the money paid to killers for murdering Shcherban came from the accounts of companies controlled by Timoshenko and Lazarenko.
Timoshenko denied her involvement in the murder of politician and businessman Shcherban. “The senseless linking of my name to the Shcherban case is an absurdity,” she said as quoted by Batkivshchyna.
Timoshenko is serving a seven-year-term in Kharkov. The court sentenced her on October 11, 2011, 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.
A new case against her was opened on October 13, 2011, for 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.
The new trial will begin at the Kharkov Kiyevsky District Court on April 19.