UKRAINE-TYMOSHENKO-SCHERBAN-ACCUSATION

Kyiv, May 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office may charge ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with complicity in the murder of MP Yevhen Scherban, according to First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin.

The charges will be ready in two weeks, he said in an interview with the EurActive Internet-based media outlet during his visit to Brussels.

There is “sufficient evidence” proving the involvement of Tymoshenko and former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in organizing and financing the murder of Yevhen Shcherban, a Verkhovna Rada deputy and businessman, Kuzmin said.

“We have testimony from several people, which points at Tymoshenko and Lazarenko as those who ordered and financed the murder,” he said.

Shcherban, a Verkhovna Rada deputy and a member of Liberal Party Executive Committee, was shot dead at the airport of Donetsk upon his arrival from Moscow on November 3, 1996. The assailants fled the scene in a car. Shcherban, his wife and a mechanic died from gunshot wounds on the spot, and a flight engineer was wounded in the neck and died in hospital. Police ruled out political motives behind the murder.

In April 2003, the Appeals Court of the Luhansk region sentenced Shcherban’s murderer Vadym Bolotskykh to life in prison.

The slain businessman’s son, Ruslan Shcherban, told reporters on April 4, 2012, that he had handed over evidence of ex-premiers Lazarenko and Tymoshenko’s involvement in his father’s murder to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Tymoshenko and Lazarenko deny involvement.

[UA EUROPE EEU EMRG CRIM LAW POL PRO]

20:39:21 EET-2