Yuliya Tymoshenko case will be a test of responsibility for the authorities and society
On January 12, at 10 a.m., the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine began questioning Vice Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, which prevented her, UNIAN reports, from attending a Cabinet sitting. The latter, the agency supposes, may have discussed the criminal case against Ms. Tymoshenko opened by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Moreover, UNIAN quotes First Vice Premier Yuri Yekhanurov as saying earlier that the government is ready to discuss offering support to Ms. Tymoshenko if she submits a proper request.
However, the first vice premier’s spokesman Hennady Harmash told The Day a more authentic, in his words, version of what Mr. Yekhanurov said, “The cabinet has no letters or requests from prosecutors about assessing Ms. Tymoshenko’s performance in her government office. The first vice premier personally has no complaints about Ms. Tymoshenko’s work in the government.” According to Mr. Yekhanurov’s information, Ms. Tymoshenko never turned to the government for protection. But if she does so, Mr. Harmash said quoting the first vice premier, the government will discuss it. As we see, a very subtle nuance can essentially change the heart of the matter. Mr. Harmash also said “nobody planned to put the Tymoshenko case on the cabinet’s agenda.”
Last Wednesday Ms. Tymoshenko was questioned by a top prosecutor in connection with the investigation of a tax-evasion case.
As Mykola Obykhod, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine, told a press conference, Ms. Tymoshenko claim that the funds she had received from a Moscow bank (Inkombank, as it follows from Mr. Obykhod’s previous statements - Author) were spent on production-related needs does not correspond to reality. These funds, the deputy prosecutor general said, “were used for various personal purchases.” As the Prosecutor General’s Office disclosed earlier, “In 1997- 1999 Ms. Tymoshenko, already a people’s deputy, concealed the receipt of these funds from tax authorities and evaded tax payment.”
Mr. Obykhod pointed out that this information has been confirmed by documents “bearing the signatures of Yuliya Tymoshenko herself,” currently at the investigators’ disposal. “These documents contain the name, date, amount, and signature,” he said. In his words, those were “very goal-oriented expenditures: shops, restaurants, bars, and so on.”
The deputy prosecutor general also revealed that the gas case investigation has spotted and withdrawn official documents into which Ms. Tymoshenko entered fictitious figures.
It will be recalled that the week before last the Prosecutor General’s Office simultaneously opened two criminal cases against the current vice premier and former president of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU), Ms. Tymoshenko. According to Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Obykhod, on criminal case has been opened under two Criminal Code articles: 70 (smuggling) and 172 (forgery), and another for major tax evasion.
Mr. Obykhod said, “The Prosecutor General’s Office has begun criminal proceedings against Ms. Tymoshenko for forging documents and smuggling in 1996 about 3 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas worth UAH 445 million across Ukraine’s customs border by using the services of an organized group and documents with falsified figures.” Mr. Obykhod claims this is only one instance of the so-called gas affair: UESU illegally documented the import of natural gas across Ukraine’s customs border as deliveries from a British firm, United Energy Ltd., and thus made it possible for this British firm to illegally transfer very large sums in hard currency from Ukraine to its accounts disguised as payment for natural gas. In the deputy prosecutor general’s opinion, these actions made it possible “to hide from Ukraine’s oversight bodies the further destiny of the funds taken out of this country, as well as further transfer of them from foreign accounts to the British accounts of United Energy Ltd. in favor of specific individuals.” According to information from the Prosecutor General’s Office, other Ukrainian consumers of the Russian gas “had to remit payment for this gas to the foreign currency accounts of United Energy Ltd. in foreign banks, not to the accounts of the corporation (UESU — Author).”
Ms. Tymoshenko responded to the prosecutors’ accusations with some “strong” propagandistic epithets. “This is nothing but dirty frame- up,” she announced, saying that the charges were “hired by the oligarchic, criminal, and political clans.” She is certain that the initiative to charge her proceeds from “headquarters set up to overcome the political crisis and destroy the Yushchenko cabinet.” The vice premier names First Deputy Chairman of Verkhovna Rada, Viktor Medvedchuk, as head of this headquarters.
“One can express sympathy for Ms. Tymoshenko who has to seek out versions to explain the complicated situation she is in. But is totally absurd to claim the existence of a headquarters with such functions,” Mr. Medvedchuk commented last Wednesday on Ms. Tymoshenko’s statement. “Neither the president, nor the Verkhovna Rada leadership are interested in fighting the cabinet. What parliament needs today as never before is close cooperation with the cabinet in order to make coordinated decisions on the key problems of Ukrainian development. A confrontation between the branches of government would be extremely undesirable now that society is already agitated and distracted from solving vital problems. I am certain the prime minister of Ukraine will also support my point of view. I hope he does not share the appraisals of his vice premier and is more optimistic about the prospects of cooperation between the legislative and executive branches of government.”
The premier finally expressed on January 12 his attitude toward what is happening. In his words, the current government proceeds from the fact that Ms. Tymoshenko has been performing her functions as a member of the cabinet over the past year “at least not in the worst way or, to be more exact, positively.” Answering a journalist’s question in Kyiv, Mr. Yushchenko stressed that investigators should carry out all actions about this case in accordance with the law. At the sometime, Interfax-Ukraine reports, he noted rather evasively that the investigation of the Tymoshenko case should resort to no “excesses or distortions which would reveal a political component rather than the fact of criminal liability.”
“We ask you to remember,” the premier stressed, “that this is a member of the Ukrainian cabinet, and her case should be dealt with exclusively in a transparent fashion and under proper public oversight. A mistake will cost extremely dearly.” All investigative actions with respect to Ms. Tymoshenko should be performed so that “this does not tarnish the reputation of, above all, the Ukrainian authorities,” Mr. Yushchenko said.
Meanwhile, the vice premier’s town criers are trying to put across Ms. Tymoshenko’s own version that criminal cases against her result from the desire of so-called oligarchs to make short work of the so-called reform cabinet.
The initiator of the cassette scandal, Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz, noted, “It is one thing is to instigate criminal proceedings against entrepreneurs or a people’s deputy (let us remind the lawmaker that our Constitution provides for the equality of all citizens before the law — Ed.), and quite a different thing against a vice premier in order to have the prime minister on the hook.”
However, the cause and effect relationship in the Tymoshenko case are more obvious than in the proverbial which comes first, the chicken or the egg. In an interview with Interfax- Ukraine, Progressive Socialist leader Natalia Vitrenko, for example, said she had no doubt there is every reason to level charges against Ms. Tymoshenko in connection with her activities. Ms. Vitrenko also opined that the opening of this criminal case “is closely connected with the cassette scandal.” She thinks public exposure of the cassettes “at a time when one must analyze the total collapse on the energy market” shows that people like, first of all, SPU leader Mr. Moroz are interested in defending Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko and in “replacing President Kuchma with Yushchenko and having Tymoshenko in power.”
It is worth adding here that in his second interview with Radio Liberty the President’s former presidential guard Mykola Melnychenko showed good knowledge of the most recent developments in Ukraine. Moreover, his assessment practically does not differ from that of the vice premier. Mr. Melnychenko said the latest events concerning Ms. Tymoshenko “were fabricated to set up” the prime minister. “This is a specific method of blackmail and pressure on Yushchenko,” he said. But how can we treat these statements of Melnychenko’s, taking into account that he left Ukraine much earlier than the criminal cases against Ms. Tymoshenko were opened? If we do not look upon the former officer as a clairvoyant who knows absolutely everything about our domestic developments, albeit outside this country, then his words should be taken at least with a pinch of salt. But the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) fraction in parliament released a statement last Thursday in which it requests, via Radio Liberty, that Major Melnychenko furnish additional information that the Tymoshenko case is of a frame-up. Is this a naive attempt to somewhat insure themselves against the accusations of taking identical positions?
However, even the vice premier’s followers, while insisting on the hired nature of the criminal cases opened against her, remain silent about the existence of the grounds for opening them. In any case, it is more to the point to answer the question whether or not Ms. Tymoshenko is guilty than whether or not the accusations were hired.
“Of course, opening a criminal case against the vice premier in charge of fuel and energy shakes confidence in the authorities,” Ph.D. in economics Oleksiy Plotnykov told The Day. “Yet I want to point out that Ukraine is not a developed European country like, for example, France, where the vaguest suspicion of bribery is enough for the minister of finance to immediately tender his resignation. But in Ukraine such accusations against a cabinet official are already considered run-of-the-mill, and no one even thinks there are certain ethical norms to observe when working in government structures.”
People’s Deputy Valery Cherep, SDPU(o) faction, stresses that, according to top prosecutors, they have already gathered enough facts and documents against Ms. Tymoshenko and the charges leveled against her are also quite serious. He notes that only a court can give the final appraisal of the activities of Ms. Tymoshenko as well as of any other citizen of Ukraine. As to whether Ms. Tymoshenko can stay on in the government, the people’s deputy believes this is an ethical question to be addressed to Ms. Tymoshenko herself.
However, it is quite futile to expect the vice premier to adhere to ethics, taking into account her ascension to the pinnacle of executive authority. The media have repeatedly noted the changeability of Ms. Tymoshenko’s positions. For example, the newspaper Vysoky zamok on January 12 points out, “During her rather tempestuous career, she repeatedly had to resort to betrayal, back-stabbing, cynicism, and cold calculation... In 1996 UESU’s annual turnover was about $10 billion. The corporation was headed by Tymoshenko at the time. You can well imagine what political and moral costs were required to handle such staggering amounts. It is just naive to speak about sterile business conditions and clean money... She (Ms. Tymoshenko — Ed.) used Vice Premier Pavlo Lazarenko as a front for UESU, she sided with Mr. Lazarenko in his struggle against President Leonid Kuchma and was the first to ditch him when his master had serious problems with him. Tymoshenko headed in 1998 the so- called shadow cabinet based on Lazarenko’s Hromada Party. She was an implacable opponent of Mr. Kuchma, charmingly calling him a political corpse; she demanded that parliament begin an impeachment process against the head of state. But, as time went by, Tymoshenko changed her political orientations. Lazarenko was away, so Ms. Yuliya steamrollered Hromada, turning it into Batkivshchyna. The stalwart of the opposition thus became vice premier.”
It thus is quite obvious what kind of answer Ms. Tymoshenko will give to the question, “Can an official remain in the government if a criminal case has been opened against him/her?” In principle, she herself said frankly that she was not going to quit the cabinet. However, this question is not just Ms. Tymoshenko’s personal business.
“The question should, of course, be addressed, first of all, to the prime minister and president,” thinks People’s Deputy Viktor Suslov. “This is an absolutely abnormal situation that tarnishes the image of Ukraine. Of course, since there has been no trial, nobody can say firmly whether the accused is a criminal. But the very fact of opening a case (while the prosecuting office is a law enforcement body) is in itself extraordinary. And I believe that someone under investigation should not hold a high post in government.
“Let us imagine two possible options. Number one: suppose Ms. Tymoshenko is right: all this is frame- up and the prosecutors harass people for political reasons. This means that the principal law-enforcement body acts in contravention of the law. This in turn means that Ukraine is not a law-governed state and the president does not fulfill his functions as guarantor of the Constitution if he allows prosecutors to act unlawfully. Now let us imagine the opposite: the prosecuting office is right and the vice premier indeed committed the crimes she is being accused of. Then (if Ukraine is a law-governed state) the vice premier should be dismissed, which is usually done on the prime minister’s initiative. This would mean the government of Ukraine includes corrupt figures and people charged with criminal offenses, i.e., Ukraine again is not a law-governed state. The conclusion is that the president is not fulfilling his function as guarantor of the Constitution because he allows a situation such that the government includes people implicated in criminal offenses. Under the current circumstances, both options are extremely negative for Ukraine. In either case, this story should be brought to an end, and the president should end it. If the premier fails to make a decision, the president is authorized to dismiss him and his cabinet. Everybody now expects the president to show willpower and think about Ukraine’s image in the outside world. It is not a question of the president’s personal prestige but of the state’s. That there will be neither investment nor economic reform under these conditions is a foregone conclusion. Who will agree to negotiate with a country where members of the cabinet are publicly accused of criminal offenses and not by the press by official prosecutors? The outside world proceeds from the fact that prosecutors should be guided by the law. While criminal cases are opened against Tymoshenko, the Batkivshchyna faction announces it refuses to vote at all until the prosecutor general is fired. This is political pressure on law enforcement bodies. This means people can evade responsibility in this way. Then, again, we are not a law-governed state. That this situation is absolutely abnormal, unprecedented, and should be cleared up immediately is obvious,” Mr. Suslov said.
What is clear is that the root causes of Ms. Tymoshenko’s invulnerability lie in the fact that business has not yet been furnished with the civilized rules of the game, which means that it has to seek both legal and illegal ways to penetrate politics and merge with the authorities, and this is what is known throughout the world as corruption. Do we know many well-known businessmen from civilized countries, who abandoned their enterprise in favor of the governmental business? This time, given Ms. Tymoshenko’s personal abilities and her having drawn lessons from the Lazarenko affair, the battle will be still more fierce. But what does this have to do with the interests of voters and taxpayers? They, in all probability, can rely only on themselves: to start with, they should try not to swallow the bait of this charming slice of demagogy.
