The Podilskiy district court of Kyiv declared illegal the criminal case brought against Interior Minister of Ukraine Yuri Lutsenko.
According to an UNIAN correspondent, the respective ruling was issued today by judge Vassyl Borodiy.
Thus, the court allowed the appeal of Lutsenko’s lawyer Yuri Martynenko, and canceled the resolution on bringing the criminal case, issued by the Prosecutor’s General Office main investigative department for particularly important cases. The court concluded that the materials of the case do not indicate clearly that Yuri Lutsenko committed an official malfeasance when he inflicted light bodily injures upon Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy at a National Security and Defense Council session on January 18. The court also declared that Yuri Lutsenko is not guilty with abuse of office or authorities, when he used planes of the Interior Ministry for his flights in August of 2006.
The ruling may be appealed in the Kyiv Appeal Court during 7 days since it was announced.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on 18 January, after a session of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy waged a fight. President’s Chief of Staff Victor Baloha claimed it was “shameful for the two high officials, regardless of who of them provoked the fight. The two officials behaved unworthy of their positions, extremely unreasonably, in a boyish way, and cast aspersions on their own authority and the reputation of state power agencies. It was the first, and, during my tenure on the post of the Presidential Secretariat’s head, the last case, when blows and slaps were exchanged at 11 Bankova Str.[the address of the Presidential Secretariat].” V.Baloha stressed that the President expects the Prosecutor’s General Office to give a profound legal assessment of the fight between the Interior Minister and the Kyiv Mayor.
