Jailed Tymoshenko faces further charges

UKRAINE’S OPPOSITION leader Yulia Tymoshenko is facing new charges relating to a host of financial crimes, just a month into a seven-year jail sentence and amid an investigation into her possible involvement in the murder of a rival.

The former prime minister “was charged with organising the concealment of hard currency earnings of more than $165 million , embezzling budget funds and tax evasion totalling 47 million hryvnas ,” Ukraine’s tax office said in a statement yesterday.

The new charges relate to Ms Tymoshenko’s time as boss of United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) in the 1990s, when the power and wealth she acquired in the cut-throat post-Soviet energy business saw her dubbed the “Gas Princess”.

Ms Tymoshenko’s lawyers say that these cases were closed in 2004 and that efforts to reopen them are part of President Viktor Yanukovich’s drive to destroy his fiercest and most popular rival.

A Kiev court jailed Ms Tymoshenko (50) for seven years last month, for abusing her power as prime minister by signing a 2009 gas deal with Russia. Prosecutors have claimed that that deal was hugely damaging to Ukraine’s interests and budget.

The European Union repeatedly warned Mr Yanukovich that his stated ambition to strengthen various ties with the bloc would be badly damaged if it were to happen that Ms Tymoshenko was jailed.

He has suggested that she might be freed when she appeals against the abuse-of-power verdict, but the avalanche of additional charges could prevent her challenging Mr Yanukovich at the next elections.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s security service said it was now investigating Ms Tymoshenko on suspicion of embezzling some €295 million in state funds while leading United Energy Systems.

Days later, prosecutors announced that they were looking into allegations that she paid for the contract killing of MP Yevhen Shcherban, who in 1996 was shot dead with his wife at Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine as they disembarked from an aircraft.

Mr Shcherban was also involved in Ukraine’s murky energy market, and a leading member of the Donetsk “clan” of businessmen and politicians.