YULIYA TYMOSHENKO DISMISSED
President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine ordered on January 19 the dismissal of Vice Premier Yuliya Tymoshenko on the grounds that a legal action has been taken against her by decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office dated January 15, 2001. The decree was adopted because Ms. Tymoshenko, taking advantage of her official status of vice premier, might negatively affect the preliminary investigation being carried out after the criminal case was opened against her. The Prosecutor General’s Office chose to apply non-custodial treatment to Mrs. Tymoshenko after she took a written pledge not to leave Kyiv.
On the same day, addressing a top prosecutors’ meeting, Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko said that what “is going on today” is a typical reaction of “those with big money” to being prosecuted.
The prosecutor general did not give a direct answer to the question whether he thought Mrs. Tymoshenko is behind the cassette scandal, but he did point out that the Ukraine without Kuchma campaign and “winning over Verkhovna Rada votes to fire the prosecutor general “have the same source of funding. “The main objective is the same: to fire the prosecutor and drop the case,” Interfax-Ukraine quotes Mr. Potebenko as saying.
Mr. Potebenko also disclosed that his office was investigating the case of Mrs. Tymoshenko having been detained a few years ago at a Zaporizhzhia oblast airport for trying to smuggle undeclared hard currency. According to him, law enforcers had then to release Ms. Tymoshenko and give back the money “under pressure.” “We are now investigating this fact also to show how the Mafia influences law enforcement bodies,” he said. “The prosecutors are sending a challenge to the Mafia.”
The resuscitation of the Zaporizhzhia case may seem somewhat excessive against he backdrop of other cases opened against Ms. Tymoshenko, which make it possible for the prosecutors’ opponents to question the seriousness of this challenge.
On January 15 after a long-hour interrogation in the Prosecutor General’s Office Yuliya Tymoshenko gave a written undertaking not to leave Ukraine. The then vice premier faces charges of attempted smuggling, large scale smuggling, and falsification in office. A written undertaking not to leave Ukraine was chosen as a preventive means, an Internet publication, ProUA , reports. When interviewed, Yuliya Tymoshenko reiterated that all accusations brought by the Prosecutor’s Office are absurd and that she does not need a lawyer. She claimed the actions by the Prosecutor General’s Office are unlawful and said that on January 15 she filed a complaint with the Kyiv City Court against Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko. Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Obikhod in turn accused the vice premier of attempting to impede the investigation. According to him, a lawyer has been appointed to the vice premier in compulsory fashion.
Renowned Ukrainian lawyer Apolinary Vronsky told The Dayabout this legal controversy that in conformity with the Constitution every citizen has a right to legal protection. Investigators must take measures to involve a lawyer in the legal proceedings. If a person in fact has a lawyer, but when summoned appears without one, Mr. Vronsky said, it is quite possible that the person intends to delay or put off certain investigatory actions.
