ANALYSIS: Yulia Tymoshenko now faces criminal charges from Russia (09/09/01)

ANALYSIS

Yulia Tymoshenko now faces criminal charges from Russia

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

Russian prosecutors on August 8 announced that they gathered evidence in two criminal cases against former Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko - now the leader of the opposition Fatherland Party and the Forum for National Salvation election committee - and handed those cases over to Ukrainian prosecutors. Ukrainian Deputy Procurator General Mykola Obikhod on August 9 said the Ukrainian Procurator General's Office has received both cases and has begun an investigation.

Yurii Yakovlev, Russia's interim military procurator general, told Reuters that Ms. Tymoshenko is facing charges of "complicity in bribe-giving." He refused to identify whom Ms. Tymoshenko might have helped bribe, saying only that it was a Russian official. Mr. Yakovlev said the charges against Ms. Tymoshenko are part of a larger graft case involving a senior Russian Defense Ministry official suspected of questionable dealings with other Ukrainian officials.

Simultaneously, Russian civilian prosecutors requested that Kyiv pursue criminal proceedings against Ms. Tymoshenko and her husband for an alleged attempt to smuggle $100,000 from Russia in 1995. The sum was reportedly found by Russian customs officers in Ms. Tymoshenko's hand luggage in Moscow's Vnukovo Airport and confiscated.

"[This is] a cheap provocation fabricated under pressure from and to order by Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma with the aim of compromising the opposition movement," the Fatherland Party said in a statement on August 8.

Ms. Tymoshenko held a news conference the same day in Kyiv and denied the Russian charges. She said the charges were orchestrated between President Kuchma and Russian President Vladimir Putin to "destroy" the anti-Kuchma opposition in Ukraine.

"There were three meetings of Mr. Kuchma and Mr. Putin in the past week to map out a single cooperation strategy for the long term, and those talks produced a specific result," Interfax quoted Ms. Tymoshenko as saying. "Russia has resolved for the third time to have a stake in Mr. Kuchma as Ukraine's leader and to support [his bid] for a third presidential term," Ms. Tymoshenko added.

According to the former vice prime minister, Ukraine will pay a price for this deal. "There is no doubt how Kuchma will pay for such accords with the Russian Federation. I am convinced that a strategic agreement has been achieved on the surrender by Mr. Kuchma of Ukraine's national interests in the political and economic spheres, as well as in the development of joint military programs," she said.

And the above mentioned statement by Ms. Tymoshenko's party specified that Preisdent Kuchma urged President Putin "to open a fabricated case against Ms. Tymoshenko in exchange for protectionism and preferential access of Russian capital to the Ukrainian market."

Deputy Procurator General Obikhod denied political motivations in the Russian charges against Ms. Tymoshenko. "The transfer of the criminal cases doesn't concern any political persecution, while cooperation between Russian and Ukrainian law-enforcement bodies is regulated by international documents," the Associated Press quoted Mr. Obikhod as saying.

Ms. Tymoshenko's lawyer Viktor Shvets told journalists on August 9 that she was hospitalized with heart problems, while Obikhod said Ms. Tymoshenko failed to show up for an interrogation the same day because of unspecified health problems.

Meanwhile, Ms. Tymoshenko's husband, Oleksander, was freed from jail on August 9 after a Kyiv district court ruled he cannot be held in custody any longer while awaiting trial on embezzlement charges. He spent 12 months in jail on suspicion of misappropriating state funds and smuggling Russian gas. At the time of his arrest, Mr. Tymoshenko was a director in the gas-trading giant Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine, which was headed by his wife in 1995-1997.

In addition to the recent Russian allegations, Ms. Tymoshenko is facing charges of gas smuggling, document forgery and tax evasion related to the period during which she headed Unified Energy Systems. Her arrest in February spurred many protest rallies in Kyiv this spring.

After her release in March she became vigorously engaged in organizing the anti-Kuchma opposition into a group named the Forum for National Salvation. Polls show, however, that many Ukrainians are skeptical of her wealth and wary of her links to the notoriously corrupt energy sector.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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