No politics in criminal cases against opposition-Ukraine prosec

KIEV, January 13 (Itar-Tass) - Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor
Pshonka sees no politics in criminal cases against opposition members who
have occupied high state posts. He made this statement to journalists on
Wednesday after a meeting of the board of the prosecutor's office of the
Transcarpathian region, the Prosecutor General's press service reported.
"All are equal before the law. By law, we will approach each person
that has committed a crime," the prosecutor general said. He recalled that
several criminal cases have been opened against the officials who worked
in the government of Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov.
"With my taking office of the prosecutor general, I set the task to
strengthen the public prosecutor's supervision in the fight against
corruption. Nobody will stop halfway, the more so that the president set
this task before the law enforcement agencies," Pshonka said. According to
him, the adoption of a package of anti-corruption laws is also the head of
state's initiative.
The Prosecutor General's Office is investigating several criminal
cases against former ministers of the government of Yulia Timoshenko. The
ex-prime minister herself is accused of misuse of funds received by
Ukraine from the sale of quotas for greenhouse gas emissions. The next
interrogation of Timoshenko is scheduled for 16:00 MSK on January 13.
In March 2009, Ukraine agreed to sell 30 million greenhouse gas
emission units to Japan. In April Timoshenko said Ukraine had received
three billion hrivnas (375 million US dollars) from this sale.
On April 22, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich accused the former
Timoshenko government of misuse of funds allocated to Ukraine under the
Kyoto Protocol. He made an assumption that the money received by Ukraine
under the Kyoto Protocol had not been used for proper purposes. "It was
stolen. And this shame is still in store for us," the president said.
Timoshenko denied the misuse of the funds because they were kept in
special accounts of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources
and said the present government could use them if need be. "It would take
a minute for a specialist to see that there is not a single payment order
for the transfer of the environmental money. They say that the environment
money was used to pay pensions. Pensions were paid but not with the
environmental money," she said.
However the Prosecutor General's Office said the funds received by
Ukraine from the sale of quotas under the Kyoto Protocol had been misused.
"Timoshenko's statement that these funds are kept in special deposit
accounts is wrong," it said. Timoshenko said after an interrogation on
December 2 that the sum in question was 320 million euros.
In October, she said the use of earnings from the sale of greenhouse
gas emission quotas by her government for other purposes should not be
considered a crime. She also stressed that she would have used the money
for the payment of pensions if she had faced the same situation again.
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