Batkivshchyna Party leader and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been ranked the most influential woman in Ukraine for the fifth year running, according to the Official web site of Yulia Tymoshenko.
The rating was compiled by the magazine Focus, whose six-month audience was nearly half a million people.
Meanwhile, the most influential woman in Ukraine has been held illegally in the Lukyanivka prison for nearly three months.
On April 11, 2011, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) gave the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (PGO) a 15-volume case involving gas contracts signed with Russia in 2009. Within a few hours, senior investigator for high-profile cases Oleksandr Nechvohlod issued an order opening a case against Yulia Tymoshenko under paragraph 3 of article 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – excess of authority and official powers that caused grave consequences.
That very same day, on the morning of April 11, 2011, under the supervision of officers of the SBU a "Certificate of a Commission Review of Certain Aspects of the Financial Activities of Naftohaz of Ukraine in 2008-2010" was signed in the office of Deputy Head of the Main Control and Revision Office Natalia Ruban. This document was to become the prosecution`s key evidence to allege that the deals resulted in 1.5 billion hryvnia in losses for Naftohaz. In opening the case, the investigator failed to examine whether substantial harm was done to national interests and did not provide any evidence of such damages.
The pre-trial investigation was carried out in gross violation of the Criminal Procedure Code and Yulia Tymoshenko’s right to defense. During the investigation, the ex-premier repeated complained to First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin about violations of criminal procedure law by the investigator, but her appeals fell on deaf ears.
In early May 2011 Yulia Tymoshenko appealed the criminal case brought against her, but Judge Halyna Suprun of the Pechersk District Court refused to recognize as unlawful the order of the PGO. The Kyiv Court of Appeals, continuing to carrying out orders from Yanukovych, in turn confirmed the legality of the Pechersk court’s ruling.
On May 24, 2001, investigator Oleksandr Nechvohlod made his first attempt to arrest Yulia Tymoshenko on the basis of an order of the Pechersk District Court from May 23 giving permission for her arrest and delivery to the Pechersk District Court to address the possibility of changing the measure of restraint from a travel ban to detention. But under pressure from the public and international community, the investigator was forced to let her go.
On the morning of June 17, the PGO in gross violation of the Criminal Procedure Code and contrary to common sense, submitted the "gas case" to the Pechersk District Court without reviewing nearly 50 petitions by the defense to carry out additional investigative actions, interrogations, confrontations and expert reviews.
Hearings in the case began on June 24, with Rodion Kireyev, who only had two years experience as a judge, presiding. Kireyev had been transferred to the Pechersk court from a district court in the Kyiv oblast just three months prior to the ex-premier’s case. The judge continued in the tradition of the investigator to violate procedural law.
The trial was held in full breach of Yulia Tymoshenko’s right to defense, with nearly all the motions by the defense ignored, with the judge refusing to call witnesses from the defense and holding proceedings in the absence of representatives of the defense.
On August 5, Judge Rodion Kireyev illegally ordered Yulia Tymoshenko’s arrest for alleged "obstruction of the truth, systematic violations of court order, ignoring the judge’s orders, deliberately delaying the trial, showing disrespect to the judge and witnesses."
On September 30 the judge robbed Yulia Tymoshenko of her last word in court and on October 11 she was sentenced to seven years in prison, barred from holding public office for three years and required to compensate Naftohaz for the alleged damages. On October 25, Yulia Tymoshenko and her lawyers appealed the illegal verdict.
