Tymoshenko calls her accusation of role in parliamentarian Shcherban's killing "open lie"

KHARKIV. Jan 22 (Interfax) - Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has described the accusation that she played a role in the organization of parliamentarian Yevhen Shcherban's killing in 1996 "an open lie," which would be easy to disprove at international courts.

"Such an open lie will not be difficult to disprove at international courts. I am talking precisely about international courts, because everybody knows the value of courts, prosecutors, and investigators in Ukraine very well, and it is not worth talking about this once again," Tymoshenko said in an address made public by her defender Serhiy Vlasenko on Tuesday.

"I know that you all are as shocked as I was by the new accusations the prosecutor general announced on January 18, 2013, regarding my involvement in the tragic murder of Yevhen Shcherban and the illegal acquisition of financial government guarantees for the UESU [United Energy Systems of Ukraine] corporation," Tymoshenko said in her statement.

"These loud accusations are [President Viktor] Yanukovych's agony and hysterics, as he knows that all previous criminal cases against me have broken apart and turned out to be empty political mud and, following an ECHR ruling, he will have to release me in the near future. He is mystically afraid of this, because he knows that he will lose presidential elections to me in 2015 and will lose everything that he has illegally gained by his 'backbreaking' toil. He is afraid that, following the elections, Ukraine will no longer be his private property and that he will have to answer for all his lawlessness, violence, kleptomania, and the collapse of Ukraine's foreign and domestic strategy. He has driven himself into a hopeless situation and is continuing to make tragic mistakes, the last of them being to charge me with Yevhen Shcherban's murder," she said.

The UESU never received financial government guarantees, she said.

"I declare clearly and unambiguously that the UESU corporation, which I headed until the end of 1996, never received financial government guarantees from Ukraine. In line with the law, such guarantees are granted exclusively by the government's collective decision and become a part of the law On Ukraine's State Budget. I declare that the government has never made collective decisions on extending financial guarantees to the UESU corporation, and such debt has never figured into the Ukrainian state budget. This can be verified easily and reliably. Hence, the criminal case against me on this account will be found grossly and obviously falsified," Tymoshenko said.

Tymoshenko believes she has been charged with Shcherban's murder so as to secure her life imprisonment as a political opponent. At the same time, the ex-prime minister said she is sure she will be freed soon.

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