Former Prime Minister, presidential candidate and leader of the Batkivshchyna Party, Yulia Tymoshenko spent 7 hours on Tuesday in the Prosecutor General’s Office and has been summoned again on Wednesday to read the file material.

She asserts that during her detention on Tuesday, she was humiliatingly searched.

Earlier the Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin stated that as of today there is no reason or need to remand Yulia Tymoshenko in custody. He said that this would be possible if she disrupted the investigation. He said that Tymoshenko and her lawyer had voluntarily come and cooperated with the investigation, there was no need to arrest her.  He did not exclude the possibility of her future arrest.

 

“In connection with systematic failure by Tymoshenko to comply with procedural decisions of the investigator and systematic disruption to investigation activities, the court issued an order to detain Tymoshenko and bring her to the court to have her preventive measure changed from a signed undertaking not to leave to remand in custody. There is indeed such a court order and it can be enforced”, Kuzmin said, specifying that that order could be applied against Tymoshenko if she procrastinates with reading the file material.

 

As reported earlier in the day by the UNIAN information agency (along with all others) Tymoshenko has been detained in Kyiv  on the basis of a court order from the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv “in order to carry out investigation activities”.

Journalists were informed of this by the Oleh Pushkar from the Prosecutor General’s Office.  He added that representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office had “turned to the court since Yulia Tymoshenko had disrupted investigation activities”.

“Investigation activities will be carried out with Ms Tymoshenko after which she will, quite likely, go home”.

 

Asked about the court order, he answered that the order of the Pechersky Court was to detain her and bring her to court in custody.

 

Yet Renat Kuzmin soon afterwards denied that she had been detained and that she was at the investigator’s for questioning, and said that there was a court order but that the investigator had not used it.

 

On 24 May, before the questioning at the Prosecutor’s Office, Yulia Tymoshenko met with the ambassadors of EU countries in Ukraine.  The EU Mission in Ukraine confirmed the visit saying that Ms Tymoshenko had informed the diplomats of her personal opinion about the situation in the country and also about the prosecution against her and other members of her government.

The investigation continuing concerns a criminal case initiated against Tymoshenko in April 2011 over a charge of alleged exceeding of power and of her official powers in signing gas contracts with Russia at the beginning of 2009. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Tymoshenko exceeded her powers and cost the State over 1.5 billion UAH.

 

On 16 May the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv ruled that it had been lawful to initiate a criminal investigation for concluding an agreement to buy Russian gas for Ukraine. On 20 May Tymoshenko’s lawyer lodged an appeal against this court to the Court of Appeal. Lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko says that a hearing date has not yet been set.

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