Monday, March 18, 2013

Cui bono?

The influential 'Frankfurter Allgemeine' have run a story - 'Yulia Tymoshenko - the dark side of power' on the background to the Shcherban murder trial.

Their [google-translated] conclusion which I've tidied up:

"Political" dividend went to Yanukovych

In contrast, after Schtscherban's death the biggest part of his business, "went to representatives of the current government." 

So Rinat Akhmetov, the head of the football club Shakhtar Donetsk, and now the richest man by far in Ukraine could only make his ascent in Donbas after the end of Schtscherban. 

His former political agent, the current President Yanukovych, could only in 1997 become governor [of Donbas], after Schtscherban was no longer alive. Thus, according to Tymoshenko's defender, the "economic dividend" of the bloody deed, after 1996, went to Akhmetov and the "political dividend" went to Yanukovych.

Later, when this duo had consolidated power in the Donbas, several accomplices to the murder died under unclear circumstances - one of them in a prison in Donetsk. 

Serhiy Vlasenko [Tymoshenko's lawyer] points out that at that time not only was Yanukovych governor there, but the current chief prosecutor in the case, the prosecutor general, Viktor Pschonka and his deputy  Renat Kuzmin had key positions in Donetsk judiciary.


p.s. Even president Yanukovych's top legal advisor on judicial reform, Andriy Portnov, perhaps out of sheer embarrassment, says the evidence presented so far in pre-trial hearings, all of which is based on hearsay from the mouths of the long-departed, is worthless.

The case is turning out to be a big 'own goal' [maybe not an inappropriate metaphor] for Yanukovych, his cronies, and the entire Ukrainian system of law enforcement. And this is before the European Court of Human Rights pass their judgement on the previous trials of Tymoshenko and Lutsenko...

p.p.s. Nice photo taken, I believe, during the opening of the Shakhtar Donetsk stadium - from an article entitled: 'Innocent victim of the regime..'



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